![Sample our Law journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5942/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Law.jpg"})
Abstract
Publically accessible, illegal, websites represent an additional challenge for control agencies, but also an opportunity for researchers to monitor, in real time, changes in criminal careers. Using a repeated measures design, we examine evolution in the networks that form around child exploitation (CE) websites, over a period of 60 weeks, and determine which criminal career dimensions predict website failure. Network data were collected using a custom-designed web-crawler. Baseline survival rates were compared to networks surrounding (legal) sexuality and sports websites. Websites containing CE material were no more likely to fail than comparisons. Cox regression analyses suggest that increased volumes of CE code words and images are associated with premature failure. Websites that are more popular have higher odds of survival. We show that traditional criminal career dimensions can be transferred to the context of online CE and constitute some of the key determinants of an interrupted career.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Dr Richard Frank for his work on creating the web-crawler used for this study as well as the contributions of research assistant Ashleigh Girodat.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 While continually changing a website’s address would function similarly to changing one’s pseudonym and thus appear to be a strategic detection avoidance strategy, it comes at the cost of losing website traffic and associated gains. Therefore, the website address should function similarly as a user’s pseudonym and be an accurate representation of said website’s criminal career duration. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that websites may also experience career interruptions, and thus, the concept of criminal career duration for a website is similar to that of offline career duration and not contingent on absolute desistance.
2 We excluded websites that required registration for three reasons. (1) Websites use a variety of methods for registering users. Therefore, the additional coding required to address each method was beyond the capabilities of CENE; (2) Even if multiple registration methods are included in CENE coding, websites use different tools, such as CAPTCHA images and sounds and unique questions to minimize non-human (bot) registration; and (3) There were potential legal and ethical issues with accessing private websites.
5 “BDSM” stands for (a) bondage and discipline; (b) sadomasochism; and (c) dominance and submission (Wiseman, Citation1996).
6 Pthc is an acronym for the term preteen hardcore and is one of the most prevalent code words.
7 The database is a collection of hash values identifying CE images. A hash value is a 24-hexadecimal code which acts like a digital fingerprint for any file. If a file is edited, even minimally, a new hash value is created. Hardy and Kreston (Citation2004) state that the probability of two files having the same hash value is 1038.
8 While it is possible that an identified interruption could be short-lived and not actually reflective of a website going offline permanently, a six-month follow-up revealed that only 5.2% of our failed websites came back online after our identified interruption.
9 We attempted to minimize the potential bias in survival estimates drawing on Cain et al.’s (Citation2011) procedures for dealing with left truncation and censoring. Using these procedures resulted in either (a) too much data loss or (b) an inability to apply semi-parametric methods (e.g. Cox regression).
10 These findings coincide with our seed websites as eight were identified as boy focused. However, within our data-set boy focused websites accounted for only 62.85% of the websites.
11 We also ran this analysis within the comparison networks, for non-CE measures. Sports websites that failed were smaller (fewer webpages) and had fewer images per webpage, outgoing, and incoming hyperlinks. Overall, no differences were found between sex websites that failed or survived.
12 Within the sports and sex networks, we also compared early and late failures. Among sports websites, early failures had three times more videos per webpage. Among sexuality websites, early failures had more webpages per website but fewer images per website.
13 All continuous variables were tested for quadratic properties. Each model began with all linear and quadratic effects. Quadratics found not to be significant were removed, one at a time, until the final model was determined. This final model was reported in Table and any quadratic effects were noted.
14 To satisfy the requirement of proportional hazard, “early failure” within sports networks was prior to Wave 3.
15 Among comparison networks, sexuality website survival was increased by 4.03 and 2.24% for each outgoing and incoming hyperlink. For sports, each outgoing hyperlink increased survival by .59%
16 Comprised within the Deep Web is the more recognized Dark Web. The Deep Web refers to the entire system while the Dark Web refers to the illegal activities that are conducted in the Deep Web.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Bryce G. Westlake
Bryce G. Westlake is a PhD candidate of Criminology at Simon Fraser University. His research interests include sexual offending, illegal online networks, and cybercrime in general. His work has been published particularly in Journal of Applied Psychology and Policy & Internet.
Martin Bouchard
Martin Bouchard is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Director of the International Cybercrime Research Centre at Simon Fraser University. In addition to coediting two books, his work has been published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, and Social Networks, among others. In 2013, he received the Award of Excellence from the Dean of Arts and Science at Simon Fraser University emphasizing his quality with mentoring graduate students