Trends in Arrests of "Online Predators".
Janis Wolak, David Finkelhor, Kimberly J. Mitchell · University of New Hampshire Scholars Repository (University of New Hampshire at Manchester) · 2009
Publicity about "online predators" * -sex offenders who use the Internet to meet juvenile victims -has raised considerable alarm about the extent to which Internet use may be putting children and adolescents at risk for sexual abuse and exploitation.Media stories and Internet safety messages have raised fears by describing violent offenders who use the Internet to prey on naïve children by tricking them into face-to-face meetings or tracking them down through information posted online.Law enforcement has mobilized on a number of fronts, setting up task forces to identify and prosecute online predators, developing undercover operations, and urging social networking sites to protect young users.Unfortunately, however, reliable information on the scope and nature of the online predator problem remains scarce.Established criminal justice data collection systems do not gather detailed data on such crimes that could help inform public policy and education.To remedy this information vacuum, the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire conducted two waves of a TRENDS I N ARRESTS O F "ONLINE PREDATORS" How the National Juvenile Online Victimization (N-JOV) Study was conductedThe N-JOV Study collected information from a national sample of law enforcement agencies about the prevalence of arrests for and characteristics of online sex crimes against minors during two 12 month periods: July 1, 2000 through June 30, 2001 (Wave 1) and calendar year 2006 (Wave 2).For both Waves, we used a two-phase process of mail surveys followed by telephone interviews to collect data from a national sample of the same local, county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies.First, we sent the mail surveys to a national sample of more than 2,500 agencies.These surveys asked if agencies had made arrests for online sex crimes against minors during the respective one-year timeframes.Then we conducted detailed telephone interviews with law enforcement investigators about a random sample of arrest cases reported in the mail surveys.