Police Cybercrime Training: Perceptions, Pedagogy, and Policy

Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 2020

The extant literature has demonstrated that there is a need for more empirical research on the subject of policing cybercrime. This article makes a contribution and offers a qualitative exploration of the problem of policing cybercrime from an international perspective. It structures the analysis around three main challenges: the knowledge, forensic, and legal challenges. A literature review supports the evidence that these issues are core challenges when policing cybercrime. Through 13 semi-structured interviews with cybercrime specialists from 8 countries, these three challenges are further investigated. A thematic analysis of the interviews, whilst confirming some of the previous literature findings, also outlines novel findings. Interview analysis shows that in some areas little recent progress has been made, in particular the recording of cybercrime. However, in other areas new creative solutions have been implemented, including filling the policing skills gap with civilian specialists. The article concludes by offering recommendations for addressing some of the challenges for policing cybercrime.

Independent Commission on the Future of Policing in England and Wales, 2013

This chapter reflects upon the relationship between the higher education sector and police services in England and Wales over recent years and considers ways in which the emergence of the College of Policing presents new opportunities for furthering the academic status of the learning that occurs within police training contexts. The chapter draws upon the lessons gained from Canterbury Christ Church University's (CCCU) direct experiences of working with the police over the past 17 years in designing, developing and delivering bespoke academic programmes for serving police officers, initial police recruits and prospective police officers. Our starting point is an assumption that higher education (HE) has a positive role to play in helping to develop police training and we concentrate our attention on trying to explain why there is resistance to establishing academic levels of attainment for the learning that takes place within police training and education contexts. We present a number of recommendations regarding ways in which the College of Policing can help overcome such resistance in its efforts to professionalise and modernise policing. Importantly, we recognise the need for a period of transition; there are arguments to be won within all levels of policing and especially with the large number of officers who are, in our view, too often excluded from debates about the role HE can play within policing. We refer to this group of officers as the 'excluded middle', as will be explained below. We have adopted a ten year approach, akin to the approach taken within the Patten Report (1999), to allow for a gradual, but meaningful change in the way the police services in England and Wales view knowledge and its role within contemporary policing.

Journal of Southwest Jiaotong University, 2021

The growing threat of cybercrime poses significant challenges for police organizations. Due to the sophisticated methods used to commit cybercrime, the implementation and investigation of cybercrime have become more demanding and time-consuming. For the police to successfully investigate and punish acts of crime, it is necessary to know and understand the operations of the perpetrators. A qualitative research approach utilizing purposive sampling was adopted to explore the capacity of policing cybercrime in the study area. The findings collected through semi-structured interviews with eight key informants comprising of South African Police Service (SAPS) Crime Intelligence Unit officials suggest that there is a limited cybercrime investigative expertise within the specialized investigation units, coupled with the cyber-elements that are part of almost every traditional crime investigation today, has caused a significant increase in the workload of cybercrime investigative units. The...

Frontiers in Psychology, 2021

Police training plays a crucial role in the development of police officers. Because the training of police officers combines various educational components and is governed by organizational guidelines, police training is a complex, multifaceted topic. The current study investigates training at six European law enforcement agencies and aims to identify strengths and challenges of current training organization and practice. We interviewed a total of 16 police instructors and seven police coordinators with conceptual training tasks. A thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Terry et al., 2017) was conducted and results organized in the two main themes evident across all six law enforcement agencies: organization of training and delivery of training. Results show that governmental structures and police executive boards are seen as the primary authorities that define the training framework in which police instructors operate. These administrative structures regulate distant and immedi...

2017

Building an international learning community', the ambitious idea of the 16th Interpol Training Symposium (Johannesburg, 2007), has become over time a shared philosophy and a common strategy in the police community. Accordingly, the Oslo Dialogue, launched by the OECD in March 2011 and aiming at preventing, detecting and prosecuting criminal activities and at recovering the connected proceeds, pointed out the need for a capacity-building approach. This should involve an interdisciplinary common strategy to improve and share expertise and best practices in the eld of nancial investigation and asset recovery. Within this framework, and in deference to the EU 'lifelong learning policy', Italy's Guardia di Finanza (G. di F.) proposed to the European Commission, and subsequently implemented (2013-2015) on its behalf, the 'Economic and nancial investigator project' (EFI), advocating nancial investigation as the pivotal investigative technique that all EU Member States should adopt. The underlying idea of this initiative is to refocus police training on the attending o cers' capacity for acquiring and implementing common know-how in order to meet the growing challenges of transnational crime. In addition, in 2014 the OECD entrusted the G. di F. Tax Police School with the setting-up of the International Academy for Tax Crime Investigation. Meanwhile, the school managed various European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training (CEPOL) courses, supporting the participants with a proprietary e-learning platform. Moving from this in-eld experience, this paper highlights the most recent trends in the eld of law enforcement training and education: a comprehensive capacity-building approach; the improvement of the e ectiveness of the organisational and cultural climate in education through the management of diversity; and the rising role of nancial investigation in countering global crime.

Applied Sciences

Nowadays, more-and-more cyber-security training is emerging as an essential process for the lifelong personnel education in organizations, especially for those which operate critical infrastructures. This is due to security breaches on popular services that become publicly known and raise people’s security awareness. Except from large organizations, small-to-medium enterprises and individuals need to keep their knowledge on the related topics up-to-date as a means to protect their business operation or to obtain professional skills. Therefore, the potential target-group may range from simple users, who require basic knowledge on the current threat landscape and how to operate the related defense mechanisms, to security experts, who require hands-on experience in responding to security incidents. This high diversity makes training and certification quite a challenging task. This study combines pedagogical practices and cyber-security modelling in an attempt to support dynamically ada...

2010

The design and delivery of effective learning experiences in foundational police practice studies for distance education students is complex and challenging. The many and varied capabilities of computer technologies, in particular the online environment is providing a conduit to connect distance education students with authentic, situated learning experiences and providing a nexus between face to face and distance education police subject delivery. This paper describes the design and implementation of an online module in police investigation studies by Charles Sturt University School of Policing for NSW Police recruit students and the student evaluation of the learning experience. Key findings from the evaluation suggests that online learning delivery which utilises real-time policing scenarios connected the student to the reality of their chosen profession and was preferable to traditional print based curriculum delivery. Further findings from the evaluation informs on future desig...

Journal of Criminology, 2021

'Cybercrime' is an umbrella concept used by criminologists to refer to traditional crimes that are enhanced via the use of networked technologies (i.e., cyber-enabled crimes) and newer forms of crime that would not exist without networked technologies (i.e., cyber-dependent crimes). Cybersecurity is similarly a very broad concept and diverse field of practice. For computer scientists, the term 'cybersecurity' typically refers to policies, processes and practices undertaken to protect data, networks and systems from unauthorised access. Cybersecurity is used in subnational, national and transnational contexts to capture an increasingly diverse array of threats. Increasingly, cybercrimes are presented as threats to cybersecurity, which explains why national security institutions are gradually becoming involved in cybercrime control and prevention activities. This paper argues that the fields of cyber-criminology and cybersecurity, which are segregated at the moment, are in much need of greater engagement and crossfertilisation. We draw on concepts of 'high' and 'low' policing (Brodeur, 2010) to suggest it would be useful to consider 'crime' and 'security' on the same continuum. This continuum has cybercrime at one end and cybersecurity at the other, with crime being more the domain of 'low' policing while security, as conceptualised in the context of specific cybersecurity projects, falls under the responsibility of 'high' policing institutions. This unifying approach helps us to explore the fuzzy relationship between cyber-crime and cyber-security and to call for more fruitful alliances between cybercrime and cybersecurity researchers.

Education, Human Rights and Peace in Sustainable Development, 2020

This chapter outlines the historical development of police education in the United Kingdom, more precisely in England and Wales, and highlights new strategies and planning for the professional development of the police. There is a plethora of research carried out regarding professionalism in policing to meet the needs and challenges of the twenty-first century. Considering the recent developments in police education and training, this chapter mainly discusses three newly introduced routes for recruitment and education of police constables under the Policing Education Qualifications Framework (PEQF), namely Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship (PCDA), Degree Holder Entry Programme (DHEP), and Pre-Join Degree (PJD). Higher education institutions (HEIs), in partnership with the police forces, are providing professional qualifications for policing as a graduate level profession. Though they have made remarkable progress in developing police education programmes, they are facing variou...

As an emerging digital society, Nigeria is confronted with rapid increase in cybercrimes. This necessitates the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) to redirect its attention towards cybercrime policing. This study discovered that the NPF is recently making efforts to strengthen its cybercrime policing capacity. For instance, it established Cybercrime Units; Cybercrime reportage portal; and trained some Police investigators on techniques of cybercrime investigation. It was also found that the NPF is faced with some challenges in cybercrime policing. These challenges include: inadequate technologies and experts on Information Technologies (ICTs) among the police; lack of cybercrime awareness, among others. Based on the above findings, some recommendations are made: adequate technologies should be provided for the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) to effectively investigate cybercrime cases; the training and retraining of Investigation Police Officers (IPOs) on techniques of cybercrime investigation should be sustained; the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) should establish a forum, which draws its membership from various agencies, including law enforcement, professional bodies, academia, and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to massively improve cybercrime awareness amongst internet users in Nigeria. Routine Activities Theory (RAT) was adopted as theoretical frame for this study.