Criminal Justice Issues

With the advent and development of internet technology, gender harassment on the internet has become one of the biggest issues facing the modern society. It is very common to hear or read news and reports relating to gender abuse on the internet. In most cases, women have been the victims of this issue making it difficult to fight for gender equality in the society. The attacks might take place in the social media, phones, emails, and computer devices among others. Gender abuse through the cyberspace is a criminal activity just like the physical harassment. As such, it is expected that those who are found guilty of committing the crime be penalized by the court of law. However, the modern society has complicated the issue through secondary victimization of the already hurt victims. The laws and criminal justice systems victimize the victims instead of helping them to get the justice they deserve. This paper seeks to discuss the issues of cyber gender harassment and the secondary victimization of the victims by the criminal justice systems of various lands.

The cases of gender harassment have increased in the recent past due to the development of various networking platforms in

In most cases, the attackers normally abuse the victims sexually. There have been cases of anonymous persons and groups calling or contacting the victims just to harass them for their amusement. It is important to note the fact that the attackers may also be women who attack other women for various reasons. Some internet hackers are also fond of getting into other people’s profiles and damaging the reputation or the profiles to humiliate the owners. Even though this paper focuses more on cyberspace harassment of women, it should be duly noted that even men have been victims of this type of abuse (Halder & Jaishankar,