(Perm Req) Contact department for information to register for this course.

rm Req) Cybercrime research has grown in visibility and importance during the last two decades. Nevertheless, despite the growing public interest in cybercrime and its consequences for businesses and individuals, only scant attention has been given in the criminological discipline to investigation and understanding of this new type of crime. The purpose of this course is to introduce students with the technical, social and legal aspects of cybercrime as well as expose students to theories and tools that enable scientific exploration of this phenomenon. In the first few weeks of the semester we will learn about the computer and the internet, and discuss several definitions and typologies of cybercrime. Then we will discuss the hacker, the victim and the IT manger, review various theories of crime causation, and assess the relevance of these theories in the context of cyber space. We will then describe several technical tools that allow the collection of data from the Internet. We will conclude with a discussion on the legal issues affected and created by online

inar in Criminology and Criminal Justice; Cross National Comparisons of Crime and Criminal J

ected Topics in Criminology and Criminal Justice; Police and Campus Inter

lected Topics in Criminology and Criminal Justice; Crisis Management and Leadership for Public S

ected Topics in Criminology and Criminal Justice; Crime M

cial Criminological Problems; Punishment and Ineq

in-depth inventory of the methods of criminological research. It considers the philosophy of science and research ethics; discusses sampling, measurement and methods of data collection, including survey, experimental, evaluation, and qualitative resea

t (if anything) motivates an individual to commit acts of crime? Why is crime concentrated in a small number of communities? Why do some societies have high rates of crime and violence while others do not? What can the government do (if anything) to prevent and control crime? These questions have challenged and bedeviled social thinkers for centuries. Indeed, such big questions have no easy answers. This course seeks to engage students in a thoughtful, in-depth examination of the idea of crime. In this course, we will explore fundamental debates about the definition of crime, its nature, its explanation, and its control. Emphasis is placed on original readings and a critical appraisal of the major theoretical paradigms in the field of criminology. We will begin with controversies over the definition of crime and deviance. We then examine the nature of crime, including crime trends and patterns. Then we turn to different theories of crime and explore the underlying assumptions regarding human nature in the competing explanations and paradigms. For example, one major divide concerns theories that explain individual differences in crime rates versus those that explain societal or community-level differences. We will also explore the implications of criminological theory for understanding approaches to the prevention and control of