Natalia Akhtyrskaja
www.crime-research.org
Problems of juvenile psychology of persons committing crimes in the sphere of information technology
The psychology interprets "personality" as a social and psychological creature, who is developed under the society influence. A man as a social creature gains new (personality) qualities when he enters into definite relations with other people, and these relations in most cases "create" or "form" a person.
"Person" usually includes such properties, which are stable and prove the individuality of a person by revealing his features and deeds, which are significant for the people.
Since "person" is often defined as a man in the aggregate of his social qualities, it means that personality features do not include those, which are naturally stipulated and do not depend on his life in the society.
Man - it is a generic notion, which points out that a creature is referred to the highest stage of the development of animated nature - human race. It is a notion of "man" that establishes genetic predestination of the development of human signs and qualities.
As a living creature a man submits to the main biological and physiological laws whereas as a social - he surrenders to the laws of the society development.
Specific human properties and abilities including speech, consciousness, labor activity, are not inherited by people but formed in the process of life by learning culture created by previous generations. Taking part in the different form of practical activity people develop and improve those specific abilities, which has been already formed.
Individual - it is a single representative of "homo sapiens". As individuals, people differ from each other not only in morphological peculiarities but also psychological features (abilities, emotionality and temperament).
Individuality - it is a combination of unique personality properties of a concrete person. What can be referred to it is the peculiarity of his psycho-physiological structure (physical and mental features, intellect, world outlook, life experience). The essence of individuality is connected with the originality of an individual, his ability to be independent and self-dependent.
The elements of person s structure are general (generic) features, typical and individual properties.
It is a structural approach that allows coming to know the particulars of many properties and features of a person and revealing connections and interactions of these properties.
The first category of psychic phenomena - psychic processes: sensations, perceptions, attention, memory, thinking and so on, which are characterized by relatively short-term proceed. It should be taken into account that no psychic process can proceed for a longer or less time.
The second category - psychic conditions: cheerfulness, tiredness, activity, passivity, irritability, mood. They proceed for a longer time than psychic processes.
The third category of psychic phenomena - psychic properties of a person. They are more stable though they can be changed as a result of biological development of a person during the whole life. Most of all they are transformed under the influence of social conditions and, first of all, education and self-education.
These categories: short-term processes, conditions and properties of a person - are called private psychological, as they are united by the general psychological essence called psychic phenomena.
The psychological science has a firmly established proposition that any reaction of a person and the whole system of his inner life depend on those his features, which were formed in the process of obtaining social experience: his needs and motives, interests and aims, system of his attitudes towards the reality.
To understand a real psychological nature of that or other property (including a professionally important one), i.e. determine which function this property will carry out in the process of activity, it is necessary to consider it in the personality aspect - from the point of view of motives and targets of the activity. For the current personality approach it is necessary to study every separate property in the aspect of a person as a whole.
The dependence of proceed of separate psychic processes on those needs and motives, which impel a person to implement these processes, was also established.
The people differ in types of perception and observation depending on the general cast of their individuality. Individual differences are revealed in the content itself of percept, remembered and so on things.
The dependence of psychic processes on a person is also expressed by that these processes depend on the general development of a person.
The psychic processes of a person are consciously regulated actions and operations, which a person gains and directs at resolving problems, which he faces in his life.
Understanding a person as an integral structure requires to emphasize such his formations, which create this integrity.
First of all, the integral structure of a person is established by the orientation. The orientation is based on the firmly dominating system of motives where the main ones override all the rest. The orientation of a person manifests itself in the various spheres of his life and activity. However the orientation has the deepest characteristic from the standpoint of attitude of a person towards the society, himself, labor activity (professional activity).
While studying a person in any aspects one cannot divorce at will studied phenomenon (process, property) from a person as a whole, his orientation, system of his attitudes towards the reality. It should be born in mind that in the process of psychological study of a person ( in particular, in the study of the process of forming his professionally important psychic qualities) it is always necessary to take into consideration which function is implemented by the studied psychic phenomenon in the difficult system of interaction between a person and surrounding reality in the process of his professional activity.
Any quality of a person (e.g. orderliness, discipline) cannot exist without a contact with his personality, system of motives of his conduct, his attitudes towards the reality, his emotional experiences, and convictions. The quality will be changing its content and structure depending on those objects and tasks, which a person sets himself, his views and convictions, as well as connection of the given quality with other subject s properties.
Understanding that people with diverse orientation have different personal qualities must be a basis for studying a process of forming professionally important qualities. In the process of this study it is necessary to come from not that the given professionally important quality (e.g. discipline, decisiveness, observation or insistence) is a supposedly quite definite, always equal to itself psychological quality, but that in the system of what person s motives it is included and the achievement of what purposes it favors.
In the practical activity it should be remembered that the human organism is characterized by the system with high self-organization and self-regulation.
The human cerebrum possesses the highest plasticity, which means the ability of adapting itself to the various and unexpected conditions of the existence.
The veritable potentialities of the psyche, its reserves of regulating organism are quite big.
For increasing effectiveness of practical activity and normalizing daily mood it is always necessary to take into consideration that a person is given an opportunity to influence purposely and actively his physical and psychic condition.
The substantial feature of human psyche consists in that it can be distracted from the reality and guided by definite convictions and ideas in some cases.
The psychologists studied different typologies of human body constitutions, which influence the person’s mentality.
Psychological differences between men and women are studied now quite narrowly. For example, it is established that men excel women in rate and coordination of movements, orientation in the space, knowledge of mechanics and mathematics, but it often turns out that women have more adroit hands, higher rate of perception and account, more tenacious memory. Some researches prove that women can synthesize information better than men. It considerably explains the origin of enigmatic female intuition.
Human cerebrum, as a main reflector of the objective world, is the most difficult organ, which has traveled a long road of evolution. Starting from simple physiological irritability, which is peculiar to vegetable kingdom, through ability of reacting to external influences because of a need in something, numerous connections were fixed in the brain with the help of biochemical and genetic memory. During gradual human evolution these connections stipulated specific psychic reflection as a result of which human cerebrum obtained, at first, a property of subjective emotional experience and then subjective perception of external impacts.
Potentialities of cerebrum are infinite, especially at the child’s and youthful age, thereby explaining an interest to computer technologies namely in this period of life. At the juvenile age potentialities of the cerebrum in perception, processing and storing various information are very considerable.
Psychologists has ascertained by using the language of figures to give a quantitative assessment to human memory size that the cerebrum can percept and store in its cells 106-1015 of information units. Physiologists have increased this figure up to 1015. Engineers and mathematicians have presented quite fantastic figures of the size of human long-term memory. They think that a person is capable of remembering 1010-1021 of information units for 68-70 years. The Russian State Library stores within its precincts approximately the same size of information.
Consciousness at the juvenile age is in the dynamic and appears on the various levels of lucidity.
Most psychologists note some difficulties in studying consciousness as it is almost impossible to measure it with known scientific methods. The attempts of many scientists to find consciousness in the human cerebrum turned out to be unsuccessful.
Self-knowledge means an individual’s aspiration for knowing his physical, inner potentialities and qualities, his place among other people. It is important that a person should feel normal and the effectiveness of his practical activity be increased. There are three aspects of self-knowledge. First, it is an analysis of results of person’s own activity, conduct, contact and relationships with other people on the base of existing norms. Secondly, it is a realization of the attitude on the part of other people. Thirdly, self-knowledge occurs at the introspection of person’s own conditions, emotional experiences, thoughts and at the analysis of motives of some actions.
Self-knowledge is also a basis of self appraisal, which includes knowledge of the scale of values allowing a person to assess himself. Self appraisal can be adequate, i.e. real and objective, or inadequate, which in its turn can be both overstated and understated.
The dynamic of crimes among teenagers caused the necessity of conducting an extensive study of psychological aspects of juvenile crimes. So, from 1998 Russian Federation started carrying out psychological-psychiatrical analysis of new crimes - serial murders committed by teenagers and children. This phenomenon was called homicidomania -teenagers’ aspiration for committing murders. Earlier such irresistible striving was not observed at the juvenile age.
Self-knowledge can be considered as a basis of the development of constant person’s self-control and self regulation. Self-control is revealed in the consciousness and person’s assessment of his actions, psychic conditions and regulation of their proceed. Self-knowledge is directly connected with the level of person’s pretensions.
Psychologists offer a formula for person’s self appraisal: self appraisal = success (result) / level of pretensions.
L.Tolstoy wrote that a person is a fraction, which strives for a unity but never obtains it. The numerator of this fraction contains an image of a person and the denominator - what he thinks about himself. According to Tolstoy, what a person thinks about himself is often better than what he is in fact.
An attempt of self-assertion has touched also a juvenile striving for the penetration into secrets of information technologies.
According to American Nua.com, 10% of the Earth population or 580 million people have an access to Internet. In May 2002 Iceland where 68% of population had an access to Internet was in the lead by the level of penetration into the "world web".
Swiss (68% of population) took the second place by this index, the third one - Denmark (60,38%) and the USA (59,1%). The study showed that "a figure gap" between developed and developing countries goes on increasing. Europe has 32% of Internet users, Latin America - only 6%, Near East and Africa - 2% of all net users.
Internet favors boundless growth of a person in the personality and professional aspect. In Ukraine the number of individual users of the world infonet can hardly reach 0,5 million people. For comparison: in Russia - 15 mln. in the USA - 172 mln. Proceeding from principles of the Children’s Rights Protective Convention ratified by Ukraine in 1991, Ukrainian teenagers have a right to information and communication. The recent report of "UNESCO and information society for everybody" runs that "the right to information and communication is an obligatory condition of existence for a democratic society" On September 01, 2002 550 thousand pupils went to school for the first time, and in total - more than 6,3 mln children^; 520 thousand - to collages, 2,2 mln - to universities. The education with the help of computer programs requires a detailed work of psychologists to reveal a positive interest and correct it on the level, which is sufficient for this age. Following parents and teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists and representatives of law enforcement bodies began to express the anxiety apropos of this phenomenon, which has not obtained a fixed name yet. Teenagers, whose all thoughts are concentrated upon computer amusements, are called gamers. Such a term as computeromania can be also met and it would be logical to introduce "gamerocidomania" - an irrepressible teenager’s striving to know computer technology in order to affirm himself and in some cases - commit a crime.
The sentence of Sosnovskiy local court said that an elderly woman A.P. returned home from the shop. In the entrance she was followed by three unknown fellows. Ascending on the first floor in a lift she saw them on the landing between the first and second floor. One of them caught hold of her bag when she started opening the door of her flat. Striking with her head against a wall, the woman fall down but she did not lose hold of her bag. A teenager pulled her over the steps up to the ground floor. Picking up a bag he ran away. They divided their plunder - 75 Ukrainian Hrivnas (15$). The motive - they needed money for the games store.
According to the law enforcement agency officers there are many cases when children stole money and things at their parents for the sake of computer games. About 90% of children with school bags can be seen in the games stores at day time that proves the non-attendance of lessons. Lawyers offer to register children with computer abuse as, for example, kid-tramps. Psychiatrists from Chercasskaya region point out that there is a phenomenon of computer abuse^; some of those patients are brought to the doctor by their parents at the least twice a week. It is clear that parents bring their children to doctors as a last resort. The rehabilitation center dealing with such problems was opened in the environs of Petersburg.
In the West the problem of computer abuse has a longer history.
Everybody remembers the recent massacre in Guttenberg gymnasia (Erfurt, Germany) when a 19-year-old fellow killed 16 persons. Mass media informed that the massacre was committed by plot of a computer game. Such suspicions in respect of bloody games (sometimes very cruel and with elements of pornography) were often aroused in the USA. Psychiatrists and teachers say about the necessity of carrying out complex studies connected with the problem of computer abuse. The dynamic structure of the personality includes the person’s orientation, experience, features of psychic processes and biological properties. The orientation means convictions, world outlook, ideals, aspirations, interests and wishes.
Education is a main way of forming the person’s orientation.
The process of socialization is many-sided. One of its main directions is a forming of value-normative person’s orientation in the process of learning social experience and culture, person perception social norms as his own life principles. The process of person’s socialization includes formation of active social responsibility: realization of being indebted to the society, understanding of the necessity to observe social norms that finally assures a normative conduct, high level of person’s education, prevention of different manifestations on the part of his.
The socialization of a person is a process of forming under some social conditions. As a rule, already in his childhood a person joins in the historically established system of social relations. A person’s joining in social relationships is called socialization, which is carried out under the influence of such factors as a purposeful brining-up, education and activities. It should be taken into account that a child is socialized by not passively accepting different influences but gradually passing from positions of an object of social impact to a position of an active subject. All educators and parents must know that a child is active because he has needs and if in the process of bringing up they are taken into consideration, it will favor the development of a child’s activeness and formation of a harmoniously developed person. It is necessary to analyze such a stage of socialization as individualization, which includes juvenile and early youthful age. This age is characterized by a wish to differ from others or critical attitude towards social norms of conduct. It is juvenile age that is characterized by a firmly conceptual socialization at which fixed properties of a person are formed. In March 2000 Scotland-Yard arrested two 18-year-old hackers from a small village in Wales. Using Internet they managed to penetrate into electronic systems of banks in the USA, Canada, Great Britain and Thailand, where information on credit cards of their clients was stored. The burglars copied codes of 26000 owners of credit cards including Bill Gates, the chief of Microsoft Corporation. The guilty persons stated that they had tried to demonstrate their high knowledge of computer technologies. Computer "geniuses" did not use obtained information for their enrichment. However experts calculated that banks would have to spend more than 3 mln US dollars to close 26000 accounts and release new credit cards. It is stipulated by that the thieves had time to distribute through the global net data on several hundred account numbers and credit cards of well-to-do clients.
The motive of computer crimes committed at the juvenile age, as a rule, is to achieve the condition of autonomous viability, overcome the dependence on something or somebody, which is percept as a threat to their existence. Some theories about motivation of criminal conduct are rich in facts proving that under age criminals have a gap in the development, are not adapted socially, inherent in pair, group and irradial conflicts. L.Eron said in his researches that violated children were considered by those of their age as asocial.
"In 1993 "Journal of abnormal psychology" published results of the study of Pittsburg pupils. The researches showed that boys with the most unlawful conduct have the lowest intellect independent of race affiliation, family revenue. This theory is subject to revision because crimes in the sphere of computer technologies are committed by well socialized persons, with high IQ.
The classification of criminals as a rule is performed by three criterions^; the scientific prevision (prediction) of possible criminal activity is used. The experts make a start from that a criminal is an individual, unique person. However they can be differentiated by corresponding groups depending on definite criterion, social signs. The most serious attempts to classify subjects of criminal actions are undertaken in six aspects: 1) etymological - problems of forming and developing criminal’s personality are considered, reasons of delinquent development are analyzed (there are exogenous and endogenous factors taking part in the formation of criminal’s personality)^; 2) characterological - circulative and extroversive types are analyzed (according to the epidotic some types of integrated and disintegrated delinquents can be distinguished)^; 3) clinical (psychiatric) - the main criterion of person’s assessment - normality and abnormality (mental health, psychopathic, insane)^; 4) social - attention is paid to the criminal’s position, his relationships in the conditions of the social environment (professional and casual delinquents)^; the main sociological classification criterion include sex, age, education, material well-doing, social status, family, social origin, social-useful business, line of business, profession, place of residence^; 5) prediction - attention is paid to the possible and supposed perspectives of criminal’s conduct with regard for his danger and possibility of his resocialization^; 6) mixed - the typology of criminal activities and criminal’s personality(e.g.: predisposition) should be taken into consideration.
Psychological profile of the criminal committing computer crimes should be supplemented with the research of intellect characteristics. Its individuality is characterized by the width, depth, self-dependence, criticism, quickness and flexibility.
Depending on the combination of thinking operations, thought forms and content there are three ways of reflecting reality: artistic, thinking and average. The thinking way is characteristic for persons suspected in committing information technology crimes. Using method of projecting module of signs it is possible to outline the circle of persons involved in the commitment of such crimes: they are actively guided by notions and abstractions^; possess an abstract-theoretical thinking. These people are often cut off from the reality^; it is important for some of them that their theoretical constructions should go with the logic of their conceptions and they do not care how the reality will response to it.
The distinctive feature of teenagers interested in possible illegal use of computer technologies is a creating of unusual combinations from usual impressions. It is possible due to the reconstructive form of creative imagination, the stimulus of which can be a dream. It combines images of desired future, which are not directly incarnated in these or other products of activities. It can be an element of scientific foresight.
A youthful aspersion for becoming a member of the society usually has success if the individual properties are accepted by group, society. If these properties are not accepted, various variants are possible:
- keeping his position and emergence of unlawful interactions with separate people, different principles^;
- changing himself to become like everybody^;
- conformism, i.e. external conciliation, adaptation.
Many publications devoted to the technique of creating psychological profile of unknown criminal have appeared recently in the modern criminalistics literature. However there are some negative circumstances in researching this problem:
1. Theory of criminalistics does not have a valuable, complex definition of a person committing information technology crimes. The given category of criminals is studied in the criminal-legal, criminological and criminal-remedial aspects, i.e. personal characteristics of a hacker remain unrevealed.
2. Because of the traditional perception of method of analyzing criminal cases as a way of collecting empirical material, the method of interview at the study of criminal’s personality is factually ignored, in view of existing conviction that it is methodologically insolvent ( or in order to keep secret, not to proliferate criminal technology).
3. Structure of law enforcement agencies does not have analytical center specializing in creating psychological profile of a criminal (hacker).
Thus the most important tasks at the formation of technique of investigating computer crimes are to assure search, draw up search tables, create geographically established module of psychological profile of a hacker, control and register juvenile persons predisposed to committing information terrorism as a way of self-affirmation.