| dc.description.abstract | Cybercrime is a new wave of criminality confronting the law enforcement clusters
of the world. The modus operandi of cyber criminals is different from those of
conventional thieves and fraudsters. It is a new area of crime that many law
enforcement agencies are ill-equipped and under-funded to deal with. The rapidity
of innovations in the computer era also makes it extremely difficult for investigators
to catch up with criminals who exploit the net for their nefarious ends. The Criminal
Justice of Nigeria and its counterpart in other nations are faced with challenges
of cybercrime which includes jurisdictional problem; the borderless space of the
internet, when a crime is committed on the internet the question arises as to which
national legislation should be used to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators?
Therefore, it is crucial that the criminal justice of Nigeria adopts proactive
measures in detecting and preventing cybercrime, thereby enhancing reduction
of the victimization of law abiding citizens. The paper adopted qualitative method.
Interview technique was used in obtaining data from twelve carefully selectofficials
of the Nigeria Police Force forensic unit, detective unit, crime prevention
and investigative unit. The officials were selected because of their expertise in the
research topic. Amongst the following are the findings: the paper identified the
simplicity of the network, the anonymousness of the users of the World Wide Web
makes it difficult to trace the criminals, and cyber criminals impersonate others by
using the password of such persons to enter network for criminal purposes. The
challenges associated with electronic banking and commerce is that criminals use
encryption to conceal evidences, thus, requiring the law enforcement agents to
decrypt such evidences before using them for investigations and prosecutions. The
following recommendations were suggested in this paper : the law enforcement
agencies should establish a regime of constant training and retraining for their
operatives, including computer crime detectives, preventers, and investigators.
There is an urgent need for more globally coordinated action against cybercrime
just as there is need to establish a working group of experts to address cybercrime
problems in Nigeria, as well as need to organize various national/international conferences and seminars on cybercrimes so that best practices can be shared. | en_US |
