The risk and needs of cyber-dependent offenders sentenced in the United States

ABSTRACT

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the demographics and risk and needs associated with cyber-dependent offenders serving a term of community supervision in order to understand how they might be supervised most effectively. This study examined the risk and needs assessment results for 813 cyber-dependent offenders supervised by federal probation in the United States. Descriptive statistics were used to provide a portrait of the demographics and review their risk and needs scores. The analysis uncovered that cybercrime offenders on federal supervision were more often white, male, and 38.2 years old on average. In regards to risk and needs assessment, most cybercrime offenders scored as low risk to reoffend suggesting they require minimal supervision and services. Because most cybercrime offenders were low risk, they had few criminogenic needs yet the types of needs they had suggest this population might require different services than probation typically provides for offenders. This study addresses a neglected topic in the correctional rehabilitation literature and offers insight into a cybercrime subject with limited official data.

KEYWORDS:

• Cybercrime offenders
• cyber-dependent
• risk assessment

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Administrative Office of the United States Courts for making their data available for this study. The authors would also like to thank the organizers and participants of the First Annual Conference on the Human Factor in Cybercrime for their support and feedback on a prior version of the paper. The views and opinions here are those of the authors and do not reflect those of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In the U.S. federal court system, many factors may impact conviction offense(s) due to the complexity of charging decisions by a prosecutor, the plea process, and judicial decision-making, despite sentencing guidelines for U. S. district courts (Kim, Spohn, and Hedberg 2015).

2. For more information on the development of the PCRA, please see Lowenkamp, Holsinger, and Cohen (2015) and Johnson et al. (2011).

3. Research on the non-scored items demonstrates that by excluding these items, there is no impact on the assessment of risk. For more information, see: Cohen and Bechtel (2017).

4. Due to the gradual rollout of the PCRA in supervision districts across the country, not every case in the sample had a PCRA score.

5. ‘Protected computer’ is designated as a computer that is used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce as well as computers used by the federal government or financial institutions, which are those related to critical infrastructure (Homeland Security, 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erin Harbinson

Erin Harbinson, PhD, is a research scholar at the Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, where she works on projects addressing the intersection of research, policy, and practice in community supervision.  Erin is currently conducting research on topics such as fines and fees in community supervision, analyzing the drivers of probation revocations, and evaluating and improving practices around setting conditions in community supervision. She also conducts research that examines the characteristics of people who commit cybercrimes and white-collar crimes in order to understand how traditional criminal justice responses generalize to them.

Nicole Selzer

Nicole Selzer is a fully qualified lawyer with specialization in criminal law.  She was a visiting scholar in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati during her general legal preparatory service.  Currently, she is a research associate and doctoral candidate at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Faculty of Law and Economics, in Germany.  Her research interests include white-collar crime, organized crime, and cybercrime.