‘The name of the game’: policing perspectives on cybercrime disruption
Chad Whelan, James A. Martin, Benoît Dupont, Diarmaid Harkin · Police Practice and Research · 2025
There is an increasing focus on disruption as a response to cybercrime in criminological and cybersecurity research. This paper seeks to extend existing literature on the police role in relation to cybercrime. The paper is based on a large, international and comparative study on the policing of cybercrime involving 90 interviews with members of law enforcement or policing agencies across three Five Eyes countries. Disruption emerged organically as a major theme regarding how police pursue their role in two of those countries. The paper is framed around the following themes: the necessity for disruption, understanding disruption, approaching disruption, and evaluating disruption. Both countries tended to adopt different mandates in relation to cybercrime that subsequently impacted how disruption is defined, operationalised, and measured. However, underlying these differences was a shared perception that disruption was increasingly becoming the most pragmatic cyber policing strategy, which has significant implications for police policy and practice.