Criminological Explanations For Internet Crimes

Crime theories are often used to understand and explain criminal behaviour. Using crime theories in the field of criminology allows criminologists to apply an understandable explanation of why an offender has committed a crime, and what may have influenced the act (Mazerolle 2015). A variety of explanations for crime exists through a range of theories. Routine activity theory, a psychological perspective, provides an ecological approach to what causes crime, and focuses on the environmental situation, which might encourage and facilitate crime (Akers 1994). Whereas, social learning theory, an interactionist perspective, focuses on the social environment, and how individuals are constantly observing different behaviours and learning from them (Mazerolle 2015). These theories can be used to examine internet crimes such as online child exploitation. This crime is an international problem

According to The Australian Beauru of Statistics (ABS) (2016) in society today, it is recorded that there are over 12.9 million internet users in Australia. Since internet became known to the world, committing crime with the use of computers became exceptionally easy for offenders (Jewkes & Yar 2013). A common phrase for internet crime is 'old wine in new bottles' -meaning crimes were always going to be committed; with the use of internet it has become easier and opened up a whole new variety of crime (Yar & Prenzler 2015, p. 169). Internet crime is explained as offences committed through the use of computers that can also be committed without a computer (Yar & Prenzler 2015). The internet can often be misused, being a place for criminals to commit crimes in anonyomous ways (Yar & Prenzler 2015). In particular, crimes such as possessing pornographic images of children and child grooming are a particular concern on an international