Effectiveness of Criminal Law in Tackling Cybercrime: A Critical Analysis

A significant number of nations around the world have enacted cybercrime laws for the purpose of controlling the occurrence of cybercrimes and mitigating its ill effects. However, in spite of enacting such cybercrime laws, available data show that the incidence of cybercrime is rapidly increasing. There are many factors that contribute to the failure of criminal law to fully control cybercrime. These factors include anonymity related issues, jurisdictional issues, extradition related challenges, problems associated with the law enforcement machinery, non-availability of data relating to cybercrime including non-reporting of cybercrimes, difficulties to identify, locate and arrest the cybercriminal, lack of experts, technology related issues, problems posed by international law etc. Since, at present, criminal law is not able to fully tackle cybercrime, there is a need to focus on cybercrime prevention strategies.