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Article

Cybercrimes on the Streets of the Netherlands? An Exploration of the Intersection of Cybercrimes and Street Crimes

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Pages 1458-1469 | Received 14 Jan 2020, Accepted 29 Mar 2020, Published online: 25 Apr 2020
 

ABSTRACT

This article explores the intersections of street crimes and cybercrimes. Fourteen Dutch criminal investigations into networks that committed cybercrimes were analyzed to gain insight into offline and local dimensions of these activities. Firstly, we examined whether the networks in these cases are also involved in other criminal activities than cybercrimes. Secondly, we analyzed the origin and growth of these networks, with specific attention for the role or offline interactions on the physical streets. Thirdly, we explored whether the cases contained information that would indicate the presence of a street culture informing the activities of the offenders. Our analysis of both the criminal activities and the origin and development of the cybercriminal networks highlights the ongoing importance of the offline world. However, our results shed light on more than just the “hidden face of cybercrime.” Based on their linguistic practices and motives and neutralizations, we see examples of how core members, recruiters, and money mules in different cases are embedded in Dutch street culture. Our findings, therefore, indicate that cybercrime cases could also be interpreted as digital diversifications of traditional street (economic) street crimes and, thereby, as empirical examples of street offenders adapting to the rise of technology.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

E.R. (Rutger) Leukfeldt

Dr. E.R. (Rutger) Leukfeldt is senior researcher and cybercrime cluster coordinator at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR). Furthermore, Rutger is director of the Cybersecurity Research Group of the Hague University of Applied Sciences. Over the last decade, Rutger worked on a number of cybercrime studies for the Dutch government and private companies. Examples include studies into the modus operandi and characteristics of cybercriminals, a nation-wide cybercrime victim survey and a study into the organization of Dutch law enforcement agencies responsible for the fight against cybercrime. His PhD-thesis was about the origin and growth processes of cybercriminal networks. In 2015, Rutger received a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (EU grant for promising researchers) to study the changing organization of organized crime due to the use of Information Technology. In 2017, Rutger received a Veni grant (Dutch grant for highly promising researchers) to carry out a study into the online and offline pathways into cybercriminal networks. Rutger is currently the chair of the Cybercrime Working Group of the European Society of Criminology (ESC) and member of the International Interdisciplinary Research Consortium on Cybercrime (IIRCC).

R.A. (Robert) Roks

Dr. R.A. (Robert) Roks is assistant professor of Criminology at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. He completed his doctorate at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam in March 2016. His PhD-thesis focused on the embeddedness of crime and identity. For this ethnographic study, he conducted three years of fieldwork (2011-2013) among members of the Rollin 200 Crips, a Dutch ‘gang’ that originated in the city of The Hague, the Netherlands in the late 1980s. After his PhD, he was involved as a researcher for the fifth sweep of the Dutch Organized Crime Monitor (DOCM). His research interests include street culture, street gangs, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and organized crime, with a preference for qualitative research methods and exploring alternative ways of collecting data (social media, digital communication, and (rap) music). Robby is a board member of the Centre for Information and Research on Organized Crime (CIROC) and on the editorial board of two Dutch scientific journals.

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