Abstract- How to apply Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis to reduce cybercrime?

For years, academics have examined the potential usefulness of traditional criminological theories to explain and prevent cybercrime. Some analytical frameworks from Environmental Criminology and  rime Analysis (ECCA), such as the Routine Activities Approach and Situational Crime Prevention, are frequently used in theoretical and empirical research for this purpose. However, other ECCA analytical frameworks —especially those based on the idea of geographical place— have been largely ignored. The limited attention devoted to ECCA from a global perspective implies its true potential to prevent cybercrime has remained unknown to date. By transposing the ECCA’s fundamental propositions to cyberspace, in this presentation we aim to show the potential of some of the essential concepts that underpin the ECCA approach, such as places and crime patterns, to analyse and prevent crime committed in cyberspace. We discuss that cybercrimes are not randomly distributed in space, time, or among people; and that the environmental features of the cyber places where they occur determine the emergence of crime opportunities. Overall, we conclude that the ECCA approach and, in particular, its place-based analytical frameworks can also be valid for analysing and preventing crime in cyberspace.