The Mundanity of Computational Criminology
Kevin F. Steinmetz · 2023
Before describing what it means to do realist criminological research in the context of computer crime, it is perhaps best to detail what such research is not . This chapter thus provides a critique of a burgeoning area of research that has been championed as a scientific silver bullet for not just the study of computer crimes, but for criminology more generally—computational criminology. Involved is the use of computationally intensive methods or the analysis of massive datasets (“big data”). Using C. W. Mills’ notion of the sociological imagination, this chapter critiques these methods as propagating a new form of abstracted empiricism—becoming a technical science of control rather than one dedicated to human flourishing. While not advocating that such methods be jettisoned from our methodological toolbox entirely, it cautions against fetishizing these methods and, importantly, scraping non-computational approaches which may be better at crafting robust explanations of the human experience of crime and victimization.