Criminology Research Report on Economic Cybercrime and Policing

This criminology research report, commissioned by the City of London Corporation and the City of London Police, explores the escalating issue of economic cybercrime and its profound impact on policing strategies. The report highlights the ways technological advancements have facilitated economic crimes, enabling offenders to operate at speed and scale without physical contact. It examines the effectiveness of current policing initiatives, emphasizing the importance of partnerships, awareness campaigns, and intelligence-led approaches. The research addresses key questions regarding resource allocation, police responsibilities, and the management of cybercrime's negative impacts. Using qualitative methods, including interviews and secondary data analysis, the report assesses the challenges faced by law enforcement and suggests improvements for future prevention efforts. While acknowledging limitations, the report successfully outlines the need for robust risk management frameworks to mitigate the risks of economic cybercrime, emphasizing the importance of adapting to the evolving landscape of digital crime.

Running head: CRIMINOLOGY RESEARCH
Criminology Research
Name of the Student:
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Author Note

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Identifying author of the research
The Cardiff University has prepared this research, which has been commissioned by the
City of London Corporation with the assistance from the City of London Police in October
2015. This research explores the nature of economic cybercrime and its impact on policing. The
research emphasizes on the positive as well as negative changes that has been brought about by
advanced technology. This report particularly emphasizes on the ways that technological
advancement gave rise to commit economic crimes, thus, enabling the frauds or offenders to
perpetrate at great speed, at scale and at a distance without requiring any physical contact
between the victim and the offender (The Implications of Economic Cybercrime for Policing
2015).
The City of London Police is the National policing Lead for Economic Crime who plays
a fundamental role in addressing such challenges by developing a national strategy and by
undertaking initiatives to reduce fraud like training in specialist skills in both public and private
sector (Reid 2015).
Purpose of the Research
There has been a rapid growth in economic crimes and the report has been prepared to
determine the effectiveness of the initiatives undertaken by the police to work in partnerships and
with other agencies to disrupt criminal activities followed by prosecution of offenders (The
Implications of Economic Cybercrime for Policing 2015). The framers of the report have
provided new data and analysis associated with the scale of this activity along with a
comprehensive perception of the challenges that are being faced by the law enforcement and
policing responses.

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Aims of the Research
This report aims at:
 evaluating the efficacy of the several forms of approaches that have been implemented to
prevent and address the criminal activities; emphasizing significantly on the initiatives like partnership working, awareness raising,
intelligence-led policing and information sharing across the industry;
 providing practical suggestions to assist the police in preventing further commission of
economic cybercrimes in the future;
The economic cybercrime challenges traditional policing models, which includes
investigation and detection as it demonstrates a standard shift in the method of committing such
crimes. Given the rapid growth in the economic cybercrime, it is fundamental to embrace more
partnership related activities as well as undergoing changes in approaches like increased
emphasis on disruption and prevention over conventional investigation and traditional policing.
Research Questions
The report aims at addressing the following research questions:
 What resources in terms of effort and money should be considered valuable for greater
cyber security? What should be the specific responsibilities and roles of the police? How should the negative impact of cybercrime be dealt with in policing? How should the police respond to the challenges that they face while undertaking the
initiatives?

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Success of the research
The City’s Police have considered the fact that challenges posed by economic cybercrime
and shall require extensive resources and time to be resolved. Therefore, the approach of the City
Police towards policing economic crime includes development of national strategy for the
policing of economic crime by engaging with major authorities lie Home Office, National Crime
Agency and Crown Prosecution Service. The City Police has assessed capabilities of the local
police to ensure policing approaches are consistent with maximum effectiveness. Therefore, this
research has successfully discussed about the initiatives that have been undertaken to deter
economic crimes and entail the role of police in deterring the same. However, these initiatives
represent merely first stage to reduce cyber risks and it is important to develop better risk
management framework to reduce the risks of economic crimes (Williams and Levi 2017).
Qualitative method: Brief Summary
This report includes interviews with key stakeholders comprising the international police
forces, UK police forces and other police representative that is further supported by an extensive
secondary research review. The data supplied by Action Fraud, which is the national internet
crimes, and fraud-reporting centre in UK has provided data regarding the economic crimes that
reveals an incline in the fraud rate experienced by UK businessperson and individuals. The
incline in the economic crime and fraud rate has been primarily derived from the large-scale
government surveys like the Offending, Crime and Justice Survey, Crime Survey for England
and Wales and the Commercial Victimization Survey.
In order to prepare a report, data has been collected using the qualitative method through
interviews. It also includes secondary resources of collecting the data from the government

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websites, government departments like the City Of London and have obtained data from other
relevant organizational records.
This report entails that various approaches that have been used by the police in order to
deter crimes which primarily includes investigation and detection. However, considering the
rapid growth in the economic crimes including cybercrimes, the police have undertaken
initiatives to work in association with agencies that will enable to deter commission of further
crimes.
Limitation of the Research
Since the report has been conducted using qualitative data mainly there are certain
limitation to the research in terms of lack of measurement of its frequency, nature, scale and
impact of such economic crimes on the businesses. The data although talks about the incline in
the rate of economy related criminal activities but it does not clearly portray the impact of such
activities on the national infrastructure and public (Levi et al. 2016). The other limitation
includes inconsistency associated with the information that was held between the several
stakeholders as well as insufficient information regarding perception of victimization.

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References
Levi, M., Doig, A., Gundur, R., Wall, D. and Williams, M.L., 2016. The implications of
economic cybercrime for policing.
Maxfield, M.G. and Babbie, E.R., 2014. Research methods for criminal justice and criminology.
Nelson Education.
Reid, S.T., 2015. Crime and criminology. Wolters Kluwer Law & Business.
The Implications of Economic Cybercrime for Policing. (2015). [ebook] London. Available at:
https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/business/economic-research-and-information/research-
publications/Documents/research-2015/Economic-cybercrime-Summary-Report.pdf [Accessed 6
Apr. 2018].
Weisburd, D., 2015. The law of crime concentration and the criminology of
place. Criminology, 53(2), pp.133-157.