When do they offend together? Comparing co-offending between different types of cyber-offenses and traditional offenses

Research on cyber-co-offending tends to focus on either the organizational structure of organized cybercrime or social learning processes among individuals. This paper provides a new perspective on co-offending by examining the extent to which individuals co-offend for different types of cybercrime compared to traditional crime. Additionally, differences in the type of co-offender (friends, family, or others) and relationships between IT-knowledge and cyber-co-offending are examined. This paper is based on individual self-report survey data from a judicial sample of Dutch adult cyber-dependent offenders and traditional offenders. It includes information on 466 different crimes (51.50% cybercrime) self-reported by 164 individuals. Results indicate that cybercrime and traditional crime show similar patterns of co-offending. The majority of offenders prefer to commit their crimes alone, but some types of crime are more often committed with co-offenders than other types of crime. For cybercrime results suggest that limitations in an offender's IT-knowledge may be a reason to seek co-offenders with strong IT-skills.