Hypercrime

In recent years, a succession of books has been published on new crimes arising from technological developments, such as the internet. McGuire's Hypercrime offers an important and original contribution to that genre. Coming runner-up for the British Society of Criminology Book Prize (2008), McGuire sets out to radically challenge contemporary knowledge not only of cybercrime and the mechanisms of control that have developed in response to it, but also of its field of study. McGuire's central thesis is that the ‘cybercrime’ paradigm is inherently problematic. Not only is it ahistorical, ignoring the continuities between current technological developments and older forms of time-space compressing technologies, but it also focuses on a narrow and distorted story of cybercrime. McGuire argues ‘that we can find one good, or at least better, story’ (p. 290) by re-evaluating some of the empirical and theoretical claims of this field. He does so convincingly through careful theoretical argument and skilful dissection of the available statistical evidence. Focusing mainly on the United Kingdom and United States, and being cautious not to undermine how distressing the experience of many harms can be, he interrogates the statistics that are relied upon by promoters of the cybercrime paradigm to illustrate cybercrimes’ extent. He questions their reliability on the basis that they are often produced by businesses and promoted by governments with vested interests. Yet, preoccupation with cybercrimes as conventionally understood, he argues, inevitably diverts our attentions away from more subtle forms of harm. These find expression in the production of a control society as governments rush to introduce new regulatory powers to tackle the threat of cybercriminalities. Moreover, it obfuscates the role played by states and corporate entities in the production of cyberharms including using computer technology ‘to dispense harm remotely’ (p. 4) as occurs, for example, with the use of ‘smart bombing’ in times of war. Thus, by utilizing the insights of harm perspectives, which bring social control strategies and the activities of states and corporations into the fold, McGuire's book attempts to offer fresh illuminations of contemporary understandings of cybercriminalities

Argument (complex analysis · Criminology · Cybercrime · Field (mathematics · Harm · Law and economics · Political science · Sociology · The Internet · Computer Science · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Cybercrime and Law Enforcement Studies · Law · Mathematics · Medicine