The Continued Importance of Victim Targeting Networks for the Understanding and Solvability of Internet-based Sexual Offences

• In Event: Routine Activities Theory and the Internet

Abstract

Victim targeting networks (VTN) have long been understood to play a critical role in solving serial crimes. For example, VTN can point towards an appreciation of offender-decision-making related to forecasting future at-risk locations and people. In the best situations, VTNs can help point towards possible offender home communities. With the rise in Internet related sexual crimes, prior understandings and experience related to VTN are now far less useful to police. This exploratory study uses a dataset of Internet related sex crimes to offer a typology of offender decision-making and action derived from a qualitative review of different methods used by offenders with Internet related victim targeting networks.

Authors

• Heath B. Grant, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

• Cathryn Lavery, Pace University