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Programming the Criminologist: Developing Cyber Skills to Investigate Cybercrime

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Researching Cybercrimes

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Abstract

The expansion of the internet from the late 1990s with advancements in speed, capacity, and availability has revolutionized the lives of many people throughout the world. However, this same technology is also exploited as a ubiquitous crime site by cybercriminals. A consequence of this has been the emergence of a new investigative resource for criminological researchers to examine cybercrime. Just as criminals have developed their technical expertise, it is important that criminological researchers develop new digital skills and methodological approaches to better understand criminal behavior in cyberspace and implement evidence-based prevention measures. There are many open-source programming languages, libraries, and tools to help the modern criminologist process large volumes of data efficiently, accurately, and repeatably. This chapter will discuss how using techniques exploited in other fields, such as software engineering and data science, digital criminologists can quickly test ideas, process large data sets, and share ideas, techniques, and data.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences, Ulster University, Northern Ireland, UK

    Ruth McAlister

  2. Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

    Fabian Campbell-West

Authors
  1. Ruth McAlister
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  2. Fabian Campbell-West
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Correspondence to Ruth McAlister .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Anita Lavorgna

  2. School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Thomas J. Holt

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McAlister, R., Campbell-West, F. (2021). Programming the Criminologist: Developing Cyber Skills to Investigate Cybercrime. In: Lavorgna, A., Holt, T.J. (eds) Researching Cybercrimes. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74837-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74837-1_3

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-74836-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-74837-1

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

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