Policing Sex Crimes

Policing Sex Crimes offers an overview of the affordances and difficulties of investigating and responding to sex crimes in contemporary digital society. The simplest to most complex sex crimes investigations can (and often do) have a digital component. Such a digital society creates a number of inter- and intra-organizational challenges in terms of investigation of sex offenses and response to victims of sex crimes. In the proposed text, the authors elucidate laws defining sex crimes across international contexts and examine the different ways nation states have responded to digital sex crimes and related digital communication technologies via laws, policies, and practices. They draw on 70 interviews with sex crime investigators to document the effects of digital sex crimes on the policing profession and the broader police organizations that sex crime investigators work. Lastly, they explore how victims are interpreted by police officers and the challenges they face achieving justice in the wake of sexual victimization.