Abstract
This article examines the challenges of functional adaptation faced by the police in response to technologically driven changes in the nature of crime. It also recounts how research under the auspices of a ‘dark web’ research project resulted in a search for an effective approach to engaging with investigators dealing with cybercrime. In doing so it tested, as a research methodology, a standard change implementation tool (problem tree analysis) from the Disaster Management and Sustainable Development (DMSD) discipline. This in turn resulted in significant consideration being given to the physical space in which that methodology is used. It presents the results of a workshop held with cybercrime investigators (not all were police officers) in terms of the importance of four key organisational and cultural issues (management, leadership and institutional ethos within the police; the risks of over-complication and exaggerated distinctions between cyber and real world policing; ethics; and knowledge, training and development) alongside the development and acquisition of new technical capabilities.
Highlights
This article describes and reflects upon the initial stages of UK empirical research undertaken as part of an international research project into the policing of The OnionRouter (TOR) network.[1]
For reasons explained below when we describe the evolution of our research methodology, this study is concerned with two wider questions that confronted the research team early in its work and not with the The OnionRouter (TOR) network itself
We decided to test the suitability for criminal justice empirical research of a change implementation planning tool used in Disaster Management and Sustainable Development (DMSD) work and to assess the significance of the physical space in which the workshop was held for the effectiveness of the methodology used
Summary
The new knowledge creation required to achieve this, first requires an understanding of the contextual situation, including how institutional culture will influence organisational and individual cooperation, and of the wider environment that has a significant impact on the problems being examined Both the varied professional (pre-academic) experience of the research team (a former police officer, Home Office official, journalist and practising barrister) and the existing academic literature provided important starting points in this endeavour, but we considered that the research process needed to be grounded in the reality of cybercrime investigators. We decided to test the suitability for criminal justice empirical research of a change implementation planning tool (problem tree analysis) used in Disaster Management and Sustainable Development (DMSD) work and to assess the significance of the physical space in which the workshop was held for the effectiveness of the methodology used. Our conclusions summarise what has been achieved using this approach to empirical research that will be subject (Covid-19 permitting) to refinement and hopefully extension to other criminal justice specialisms within the remaining period of this research project
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