Book Review: Policing Cyberspace: A Structural and Cultural Analysis

• Author: Michele W. Covington
• Date: 01 March 2012
• Published date: 01 March 2012
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016811406715
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Denver and Minneapolis at the beginning and during early operations? In addition to individual

jealousies, how did collective jealousies erode support for Operation Ceasefire? Who were the

pivotal actors and groups working to sustain parole failure in California (besides the correctional

officers union)? What about organized support, and then later criticism and removal of support, for

the DARE program?

The answers to these questions would have led to a more thorough analysis of politics and

coalition-building in both support and opposition of the projects described. It is clear that the other

themes suggested by Berman and Fox regarding criminal justice failure mentioned above are

important but the politics question deserves greater attention. Through an analysis of coalition

action, we can learn much more about criminal justice failure, and how criminal justice research-

ers and practitioners can appropriately respond. For the researcher, failure is a way to reconcep-

tualize a question; for the criminal justice practitioner, failure can refocus efforts and resources to

respond more effectively to an issue or problem.

Berman and Fox conclude the book with statements regarding mistakes made in criminal jus-

tice reform initiatives. These mistakes are to be taken seriously, such as a lack of self-reflection,

defining success too narrowly, thinking rational inquiries will provide panacea solutions to crime

problems, expecting too much from criminal justice reform efforts, failing to navigate politics,

planning in isolation, and taking a top-down approach to implementing change. These are al l

worthwhile revelations learned from past criminal justice failures.

The authors also provide lessons to be learned from criminal justice failures. I will not explicate

these lessons here, but I will say that this little book begins an inquiry that can lead others to pursue

criminal justice failure as a legitimate area of inquiry, a value to both the researcher and the criminal

justice practitioner. For beginning this inquiry, Berman and Fox are to be commended. It is now the

obligation for others to pursue criminal justice failure more comprehensively such that the status quo

is consistently being questioned, an outcome clearly favored by the authors.

J. Nhan (2010)

Policing Cyberspace: A Structural and Cultural Analysis. El Paso, TX:

LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2010. viii, 208 pp. $65.00. ISBN: 978-1-59332-398-1

Reviewed by: Michele W. Covington, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016811406715

Johnny Nhan’s Policing Cyberspace: A Structural and Cultural Analysis is a qualitative study

describing cybersecurity in California, including pertinent actors and stakeholders and the relation-

ships between them. This is a timely study, and one that adds substantially to knowledge on cyber-

crime. Dr. Nhan, who received his PhD from the University of California at Irvine and is currently an

assistant professor at Texas Christian University, defines the main research goals of the study as

identifying stakeholders, examining the control mechanisms that govern stakeholder behaviors, and

determining how the Internet impacts institutions and relationships (p. 13). The author begins by

providing an account of the recent increase in cybercrime and the accompanying financial and social

ramifications.

The six substantive chapters that follow the introduction describe the theory, method s, and

results of the study. Chapter Two explains how the work draws on two main theories, the nodal

governance theoretical model and the system capacity model, and provides a general overview

of each of the theories as well as describing why they are appropriate choices for the topic of

cybercrime. Numerous resources are tapped and citedinAPAformat.Chapter Three d iscusses the

methods of the study; qualitative methods were used because of the exploratory nature of the work

130 Criminal Justice Review 37(1)