Doctor of Philosophy -- Focuses

¶ … Doctor of Philosophy -- focuses on which theory is applicable when a victim of identity theft decides to report the incident. Seventy people (who live in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas) were given a 70-question survey through the Internet; the survey intended to determine which variables applied to the decision to report the identity theft. Would the "victim precipitation theory" (that the victim has made the crime possible) hold true or would the "institutionalization theory" prove most often used? Gray explains in the Abstract to this dissertation that the tenets of institutionalization theory were affirmed as the most prevalent. That result in fact leaves the perspective of the victim (and the victim's action) "…still untapped" (Gray, 2010).

Key Points of the Article -- Analysis

Several points in the dissertation should be mentioned at the outset of this analysis. One, the losses to citizens (according to the FBI) total upwards of $198.44 as of 2007. It would seem that would be a low estimate given the widespread publicity surrounding the problem. Secondly, the efforts of many governmental agencies and law enforcement organizations -- despite having worked "feverishly for more than a decade" -- have failed to halt the ongoing problem of identity theft. Why has law enforcement efforts failed? Gray writes that technology has progressed so fast that enforcement lags behind the emerging technology.

Also, research has not yet progressed past the "…superficiality of identity theft victimology" in order to find out the deeper reason why some people's identity is stolen (Gray, p. 2). An overriding issue facing law enforcement is the failure of victims to report the crime; failure of reporting data is hampering efforts to more fully understand this cybercrime. To wit, if law enforcement doesn't have updated statistics and criminals go unpunished, there is no progress made in catching the thieves. On page 5 Gray's narrative is clumsy and misleading, which takes some of the shine off the research. In discussing the number of cybercrime complaints made to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), Gray writes: "The vast majority of the criminal complaints were fraudulent in nature with an average financial loss of $724.00" (p. 5). She didn't mean the complaints were a fraud, but rather than the complainant had been treated fraudulently.

Meanwhile, another key point Gray makes is that current studies have failed to examine: a) whether or not victims had contributed to their own victimization; b) the poor response by law enforcement to victims; they don't investigate these crimes as a rule; c) the fact that law enforcement agencies assert that the banks and credit card companies are the real victims; and d) that banks are suspicious that the "victim" is attempting to scam the banks to retrieve money from the alleged crime (Gray, 6-8).

Summary of the Article's Conclusions