Cyber Crime and the Victimization of Women: Laws, Rights and Regulations

While women benefit from using new digital and Internet technologies for self-expression, networking, and professional activities, cyber victimization remains an underexplored barrier to their participation. Women often outnumber men in surveys on cyber victimization. Cyber Crime and the Victimization of Women: Laws, Rights and Regulations is a unique and important contribution to the literature on cyber crime. It explores gendered dimensions of cyber crimes like adult bullying, cyber stalking, hacking, defamation, morphed pornographic images, and electronic blackmailing. These and other tactics designed to inflict intimidation, control, and other harms are frequently committed by perpetrators who, for many reasons, are unlikely to be identified or punished. Scholars, researchers, law makers, and ordinary women and their supporters will gain a better understanding of cyber victimization and discover how to improve responses to cyber crimes against women.

Debarati Halder is an advocate and legal scholar. She is the managing director of the Centre for Cyber Victim Counselling. She is also the Vice President of WHOA, USA (Working for Halting Online Abuse) Kids-Teen Division and Internet Safety Advocate. She is the current Secretary of the South Asian Society of Criminology and Victimology (SASCV). She received her LLB from the University of Calcutta and LLM in international and constitutional law from the University of Madras. She is currently working toward her PhD at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, India. She has published many articles in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in peer-reviewed books. Her work has appeared in scholarly journals, including the Journal of Law and Religion, Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law, ERCES Online Quarterly Review, TMC Academic Journal (Singapore) and Indian Journal of Criminology & Criminalistics and edited volumes, Crimes of the Internet (Prentice Hall, 2008, Trends and Issues of Victimology (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2008), International Perspectives on Crime and Justice (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2009), et cetera. Her research interests include constitutional law, international law, victim rights and cyber crimes and laws.

K. Jaishankar, PhD, is a senior Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University in Tirunelveli, India. During November 2009 - April 2010, he was a Commonwealth Fellow at the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law, University of Leeds, UK. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Cyber Criminology and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences. He is the founding president of the South Asian Society of Criminology and Victimology and founding executive director of the Centre for Cyber Victim Counselling. He was awarded the prestigious Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship, 2009-2010 tenable, from the University of Leeds. He was a member of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime core group of experts (15-member group) on identity-related crime (2007-2008) and a member of the International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the United Nations working group on cyber crime during the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme in Milan, Italy. He was recently appointed as a fellow of the African Centre for Cyberlaw and Cybercrime Prevention. He was a co-investigator of an international grant funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada to develop a profile of cyber bullying, inform the current policy vacuum and develop guidelines to help schools address cyber bullying. Among the recent books he has written and/or edited are: Cyber Criminology: Exploring Internet Crimes and Criminal Behavior (CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, USA, in press); Cyber Bullying: Profile and Policy Guidelines (DOCCJ, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, India, 2009); International Perspectives on Crime and Justice (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2009); Trends and Issues of Victimology (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2008); and Crime Victims and Justice: An Introduction to Restorative Principles (Serial Publications, New Delhi, 2008). He pioneered the development of the new field of cyber criminology and is the proponent of the space transition theory of cyber crimes. His areas of academic competence include cyber criminology, victimology, crime mapping, Geographic Information Systems, communal violence, theoretical criminology, policing and crime prevention.