Unpacking the political-criminal nexus in state-cybercrimes: a macro-level typology

Abstract

AbstractCriminological literature on crime and deviance in cyberspace has boomed in recent years with most studies focusing on computer integrity crimes, computer content crimes and financial cybercrimes, also discussing the opportunity to consider some of these crimes as profit-driven forms of organised crime. The existing literature, however, has not addressed extensively yet the impact of the emergence and proliferation of cyber affordances on forms of state-organized crime – a conceptualization that since the late ‘80 s proved successful in shedding light, among other things, on the relationships among social structures and criminality. Seeking to address this gap, this conceptual contribution focuses on state-cybercrimes, where illegal, harmful or unjust cyber activities are committed for the benefit of a state or its agencies, offering a macro-typology to shed light on how cyber affordances are influencing and transforming the state-crime relations.