Many courses focusing on theories of cybercrime require materials from multiple textbooks to cover all the relevant topics. Essential Readings in Cybercrime Theory and Policy provides a broad overview of cybercrime while also discussing theoretical explanations and policy implications.

The book addresses crimes such as cyberbullying, internet child pornography, hacking, and cyberterrorism that involve computers as either a tool or a target. It increases readers' awareness of cybercrime and examines such crime from both social and behavioral science perspectives.

Topics include computer forensics, a social learning theory analysis of computer crime among college students, deviant peer associations and juvenile cyberdeviance, justifications for criminal computer activity, and characteristics of online sex offenders.

The first book to offer theoretical explanations for common cybercrimes, Essential Readings in Cybercrime Theory and Policy is suitable for courses in criminal justice, computer forensics, psychology, and computer science.

Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar holds a Ph.D. in cyberforensics from Purdue University. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Alabama. Dr. Seigfried-Spellar regularly writes and present on issues related to cybercrime.

Mark Lanier earned his Ph.D. at Michigan State University. Dr. Lanier is a professor, a full member of the graduate faculty, and the dean's special projects assistant in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Alabama. He writes extensively on crime and criminology.