Rational Choice Theory Of Crime

The advances in technology has opened the world to endless possibilities to help make everyday life easier, but with the advances technology provides, similarly crime has also advanced. Criminals have easier access to gain information from their victims than ever before, as a consequence, innocent people and businesses fall victim to cyber theft, cyber vandalism, and cyberterrorism. Criminals who rob people of their identity or create cyber-attacks, their actions can be explained by rational choice theory. Rational choice theory is defined by a person weighing the cost and benefits of committing a crime. The individual is knowledgeable when deciding if a crime is worth the risk. The invention of the internet has been an exceptional tool

For a criminal to commit this crime is to steal a person’s valuable information such as a social security number, and credit card number. By an offender having access to this type of information is a great benefit for them. The offender is able to make purchases in the name of the victim and stealing their life savings, creating a profit which may be worth the risk. To correlate rational choice, or choice theory to cybertheft is that the offender disregard the rights they are violating. By stealing people’s identity and reselling stolen products may be a greater benefit for the offender, the reward is greater than the

Cybervandalism is explained by harmful attacks that is used to deface and destroy technology. There are several forms of cybervandalism, such as viruses, worms, to user’s computers to destroy it. Not all cases of cybervandalism is caused by the hacker wanting revenge on their victims, some hackers may want to showcase their ability to encrypt computers that are supposed to protected by the FBI or any other government agency. The most common form of cybervandalism is a virus. A virus can be detrimental for any computer, government protected or not. When a virus is programed on a computer system, the function of it is to destroy documents and networks. The second type of cybervandalism is spam. Each person who has an email account, their inbox is filled with spam. Spam is an unsolicited advertisement or a promotional event that floods user’s inboxes through their emails. Spam can be identified by promotions that are too good to be true, such as paid vacations and winning large sums of money.

Coupled with cybertheft, criminals make the rational choice to send viruses to people’s computers to hack them. Hackers make the choice to deface a computer’s software system for many reasons such as revenge, political gain, or simply to see if they are able to break a fire wall. Whether if the criminal affected a computer with a virus or worm, the rational choice to made to destroy