Civilianising specialist units: Reflections on the policing of cyber-crime

Abstract

Civilianisation refers to utilising non-sworn personnel to perform certain roles within police organisations. While the civilianisation of policing has been examined in a variety of contexts, it has generally been in relation to attempts to improve police efficiency. The current literature is much less focused on efforts to intentionally seek out civilians to improve police effectiveness, which, we suggest, is likely to apply in the case of police responses to cyber-crime. Using empirical data collected with three specialist cyber-crime units in Australia, we explore the arguments for and against civilianising cyber-crime units as a strategy to improve police capacity, as reported by police and civilian members of these units. We consider these arguments in relation to a broader debate as to whether it is better to improve police capacity by employing civilian experts or attempt to develop greater expertise on cyber-crime among police.

Perceptions of police training needs in cyber-crime

“…We make no claim that the four groups we have identified in this article are the only groups that are relevant. For example, there are likely to be a wide range of roles such as crime or intelligence analysts that could also benefit from enhanced training in relation to cyber-crime (Western et al, 2019; 2020). Nonetheless, our overall goal in this article is to illustrate that improving the overall capacity of police to respond to cyber-offending and better provide for victims must first recognise that efforts to improve training needs to be situated within the complexities of the police organisation.​​​​​​​…”

Re-territorialising the policing of cybercrime in the post-COVID-19 era: towards a new vision of local democratic cyber policing

“…On the other hand, low reporting levels contribute to a limited police mandate to address cybercrime, and has been explained by the public's perception of common cybercrime as an individual problem which passes the threshold for police action in only a limited number of instances (HM Government, 2016;Yar, 2013). The police face additional problems of sufficient training (Reform, 2017;Cockcroft et al, 2018), and ultimately retaining trained officers where salaries struggle to compete with the offerings of the private sector (Harkin et al, 2018;Whelan and Harkin, 2019). While an increasing number of authors are exploring the new and innovative ways police are responding to a variety of cybercrime threats (Brewer et al, 2019;Dupont, 2016), we argue that at the level of local policing, more attention has been paid to its limits than its capacities and possible futures.…”

Digital media investigators: challenges and opportunities in the use of digital forensics in police investigations in England and Wales

“…Extant studies focus largely on crimes related to finance and fraud (Bossler et al , 2019), romance scams (Whitty and Buchanan, 2012) and sexual abuse (Powell et al , 2019). Overarching themes in the current scholarship encompass the technical difficulties of investigating digital offences, the gaps in communication and networking between law enforcement and government agencies, jurisdictional issues and the lack of training and police preparedness (Whelan and Harkin, 2019).…”

“…The gaps in the digital knowledge provision are also discussed in the small number of qualitative analyses available. These consider mostly jurisdictions outside the UK, exploring for instance the introduction of cybercrime policing in the USA (Holt, 2013), the challenges experienced by Canadian forces in their investigation of sex crimes (Spencer et al , 2019) or the development of cybercrime divisions in Australian policing (Whelan and Harkin, 2019). In the latter, the authors call for the need to explore the expansion of cybercrime divisions and understand their work in more depth.…”