Digital Criminology: Security and Safety in Digital Environments

Session Submission Type: Pre-arranged Panel

Abstract

Whether through smart cities, LLMs, true crime streaming or the crypto-boom, the range of vulnerabilities in digital environments keeps expanding. This panel is dialogical in the sense that all papers have an eye on new forms of victimizations, while aggressors range from fraudsters or those committing cybercrime offenses to authoritarian regimes that violate human rights. The papers give insight into concrete practices as well as theoretical frameworks to identify the administrative, socio-political and epistemological transformations needed to address victimizations and foster security and safety in digital environments.

This panel is part of collection of digital criminology panels at EUROCRIM2025 and contributes to innovative crime and justice scholarship within the emerging field of ‘digital criminology’.  Instead of positioning technology as separate from society more broadly, digital criminology takes up the idea that all technologies are embedded in social structures and that all societies are embedded in technological infrastructures. More specifically, digital criminology examines the incorporation of digital technologies, media, and infrastructures in criminological settings (Stratton, Powell and Cameron, 2018; Wood, 2020; Kaufmann and Lomell 2025, Van Brakel and Govaerts, 2025).

Subtopic

• Topic 5: Social Control and Criminal Justice / Policing and Law enforcement (Policing WG)

Chair

• Meropi Tzanetakis, Vienna University of Economics and Business

Individual Presentations

• Exploring correlates of reporting cybercrime victimization to law enforcement - Karen Holt, Michigan State University; Thomas J. Holt, Michigan State University; Rachel McNealey, Michigan State University; Taylor Fisher, Michigan State University; Julie Krupa, Michigan State University

• All play, no wins: crime scripting cryptofrauds - Catherine Van de Heyning, University of Antwerp; Wannes Donies, Public Ministry Antwerp; Christophe Van Bortel, Belgium Police

• Authoritarian smart cities and cultural biases – investigating the socio-legal implications of the New Administrative Capital of Egypt - Amr Marzouk, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Karolina Podstawa, Maastricht University