NCJ Number
105370
Journal
Deviant Behavior Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Dated: (1987) Pages: 113-130
Date Published
1987
Length
18 pages
Annotation
During the 1970's and 1980's, an overwhelming majority of State legislatures acted to protect computer technology by declaring unauthorized intrusion into electronic data files and similar offenses as crime.
Abstract
Despite that effort and the admitted threat posed by perpetrators to vital local, State, national, and international interests, pursuit and control of these offenders has lagged. Using a social constructionist perspective, the purpose of this paper is to offer an account for the apparent contradiction between the perception of these events as serious and offensive, and the resulting lawmaking effort, on the one hand, and lagging control or law enforcement efforts, on the other. Of relevance to the analysis are several issues that inform commonsensical understandings regarding the wrongfulness of computer abuse. Included are the popular image of perpetrators, efforts to neutralize abusers' behavior, and the conception that much computer abuse is play. Together, these constructions permit one to 'make sense' of this seeming contradiction, shed further light on the problematic nature of crime and deviance, and lend added clarity to the distinction between rule breaking and deviation/crime. (Publisher abstract)