by Gene Stephens

About the author: Gene Stephens is a professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

Billions of dollars in losses have already been discovered. Billions more have gone undetected. Trillions will be stolen, most without detection, by the emerging master criminal of the twenty-first century—the cyberspace offender.

Crime in the Future

Worst of all, anyone who is computer literate can become a cybercrook. He or she is everyman, everywoman, or even everychild. The crime itself will often be virtual in nature—sometimes recorded, more often not—occurring only in cyberspace, with the only record being fleeting electronic impulses.

But before discussing the info highway crimes we can expect to see in the years ahead, let’s look at the...