Unpacking cyber affordances in the context of state-cybercrime

Criminological literature on crime and deviance in cyberspace has boomed in recent years with most studies focusing on computer integrity crimes, computer content crimes and financial cybercrimes, also discussing the opportunity to consider some of these crimes as profit-driven forms of organised crime. The existing literature, however, has not addressed extensively yet the impact of the emergence and proliferation of cybercrimes on forms of state-organized crime – a conceptualization that since the late ‘80s proved successful in shedding light on the relationships among social structures, criminality, and political economy. Seeking to address this gap, this contribution focuses on state-cybercrimes, where illegal, harmful or unjust cyber activities are committed for the benefit of a state or its agencies, offering a typology and discussing its heuristic value to shed light on how cyber affordances influence and transform the state-crime relations.