Digital Criminology: Criminalization and Crises

Session Submission Type: Pre-arranged Panel

Abstract

Crime can be seen as one of many crises that governments need to address. As the result of digitaliization and the rise of artificial intelligence the governance of crime is increasingly addressed through digital methods and approaches. While digitalization is often praised as “progress” this panel shows how it can also create new issues of criminalization, victimization, and power imbalances between different public and private actors.
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

• Nick Gibbs, Northumbria University

Individual Presentations

• The entanglement of crisis and policing: Pluralization and Digitalization of Law Enforcement in Denmark and Sweden - Katarina Winter, Stockholm University; Vasilis Galis, ITU Copenhagen

• Digital Sex Work: Sexual Entrepreneurship in the Shadow of Criminalisation - Helen Rand, University of Greenwich

• From trait to treatment: The genetic subject and crime prevention - Mareile Kaufmann, University of Oslo; Vilde Bergmann Winge, University of Oslo

• Surveillance Assemblages at Public Gatherings across Europe - Julie Caluwaerts, Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Mattias De Backer, Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Lucas Melgaço, Associate Professor -VUB