NCJ Number
211094
Journal
Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 44 Issue: 4 Dated: September 2005 Pages: 387-399
Date Published
September 2005
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This article explored the ways in which public discussions of computer hacking attempt to explain the disproportionate involvement of young people in this type of computer crime.
Abstract
Society has long been fascinated with the criminality of young people and, indeed, politicians, media, and academic researchers have often blamed the criminality of young people on many of society’s ills. The current analysis focuses on how non-criminological discussions of youth and crime create the perception that youth involvement in crime is due to adolescent personality and development, as well as inter-generational conflict, familial dysfunction, and adolescent subcultural association. The author reviews the motivations of hackers, from the perspective of hackers as well as “outsiders” and illustrates how young hackers themselves invest in the notion of a chasm between society and its youth. The analysis also focuses on how computer hacking has been linked to drug abuse and other types of criminality, as well as on how gendered explanations involving perceptions of masculinity have emerged to understand young computer hackers. These lines of public discourse demonstrate a striking homology between non-criminological and criminological explanations of youth crime and young hackers. As public policy moves forward on the issue of computer crime, decisionmakers would be remiss not to begin a dialog between criminologists and other youth crime analysts. Note, references