: How do these things help you out (if they do at all) as a professor at Drexel?

D’Ovidio: In our undergraduate program in criminal justice, we have the traditional courses that any criminal justice program would have in corrections and law enforcement, violence and in chorological theory. But we offer two area concentrations or focuses: one in forensic science, which would be the traditional forensic science that is often affiliated with the physical biological sciences that you would see on CSI or other shows like Navy NCIS. So, that’s one area of concentration. The other area is in cyber crime. Within that focus we have five or six courses. Most of my teaching is out of that area of focus. For instance, I teach a course on introduction to computer crime. This term I’m teaching a course called Sex, Violence, and Crime on the Internet, which deals with online crimes against children, whether it’s sexual predators, luring children, child pornography. We also look at cyber stalking, online harassment; we look at hate groups, and their use of the internet. We also offer a course that I teach called Surveillance, Technology, and the Law. Intellectual property theft, which goes well beyond the theft of music and motion pictures through your computer systems, is part of the course. These courses have been very successful.

I started here in September of 2004. This is really my second academic year that I’m here, and I’ve had full courses this year. Last year, we had 20 students or so in the courses. So, there is a lot of interest on campus. Since the criminal justice program is relatively new, most of our majors are 1st or 2nd year students. They’re not yet to the point where there are electives in droves, so I’m getting a lot of students from other disciplines: computer science, information studies, communications, even from CoMad [College of Media Arts and Design]. I primarily teach those courses because there is a need. I actually asked to teach Statistics this term, so instead of focusing on a computer crime course, I’m teaching Sex, Violence, and Crime on the Internet, and the other course I’m teaching is Statistics. But you know, for me, as an instructor, as a college professor, especially teaching the courses about computer crime, I bring to the classroom my research experience, which, to me, sort of feeds the passion for teaching. The examples I’m bringing to class not only are examples that they’re reading in the literature, but also are examples that I’ve had first hand experience in while working with law enforcement.

: How do you teach the courses? Is it mostly text-based?

D’Ovidio: In addition to the courses that I mentioned, we have a computer forensics course that is outside of books. We haven’t offered it yet, but that will be a hands-on laboratory type of course, where you actually learn how to trace an email, how to identify if we’re communicating in a chat room or some sort of instant messaging program. And if you’re sending me death threats for instance, how would the police then translate that screen name into an actual individual? You’ll learn those types of techniques. That’s a technical course that requires a proper laboratory, which involves Intel software and hardware, which we’re still working towards getting. Most of the courses now are taught from a social science perspective that I’m teaching currently, and that’s where my area of expertise lies, so it makes sense for me to be teaching courses from that vein. For instance, in the course Introduction to Computer Crime, we look at an overview of what computer crime is, and then focus specifically on fraud, cyber fraud, and intrusion. So, what are the different types of fraud? Methodologies used? Those are the types of things that we do.

Then we look at the challenges of the criminal justice system when crime shifts from the physical world into the virtual world. One specific challenge is jurisdiction. When you look at fraud offenses in the physical world, it’s most often that the local police, when they investigate fraud cases, the victim and offender reside within their particular jurisdiction, or in close proximity, maybe the township next to them. And that’s because of the characteristics of the crime; if I’m going to steal from the store, I need to be located pretty much near it. That tends not to be the case with virtual crime, computer related crime. So, it creates not only legal challenges for law enforcement communities and prosecutors, but also resource challenges. I’ve got an offender in California and the victim in Philadelphia, and I’m the Philadelphia police. Identify the offender; I get the authorities in California to hold the offender, to arrest him, now I have to send detectives out to California to transport the offender back. From a resource perspective, that can create a problem when you multiply that by tens and hundreds; you could get a hundred cases, 200 round trip tickets, you send two detectives, plus one one way ticket. When you didn’t have that in last year’s budget and now it’s in this year’s budget, that creates a problem from a resource perspective. So, there are some challenges that these types of crimes create for law enforcement in the criminal justice system. Corrections, too. How do we deal with these types of individuals from a correctional perspective? Are there certain types of rehabilitative programs they can go into? Are there certain needs of this particular community? Do we need to restrict them? Are they really a danger? Cyber stalking, for instance, or harassment online—are those threats, because it takes place in the computer medium versus the actual physical world? If I’m in California and you’re in Texas and I’m sending you death threats via email, maybe it’s psychological damage. But in terms of physical threat, the risk of physical injury to the victim is greater. So, the media actually have an effect on the characteristics of crime.