Cybercrime: re-thinking crime control strategies
Susan W. Brenner · 2013
Human societies must maintain internal order if they are to endure. ’Order’ refers to the need to coordinate and allocate activities among the members of the populace in a way that ensures the performance of the functions necessary for their survival. Societies use rules to establish and maintain order. A rule is a principle that governs action and inaction; it specifies which actions are allowable and which are not. Human societies use constitutive rules to maintain internal order. Constitutive rules define the structure of a society by defining relationships among the individuals who comprise that society; they also allocate essential tasks among the members of the society and ensure that they are performed (Brenner, 2004). Societies have historically been bounded systems situated in a delimited spatial area and composed of a defined populace (e.g. ‘the people of Rome’). Spatial and demographic isolation make it easier to socialise those who populate a society so that most accept and abide by its constitutive rules; they also make it easier to identify and suppress those who do not.