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Criminal Association In Cyberspace
April 01, 2011 posted by Steve Brownstein
by Art Bowker
A prohibition against any criminal associations is a standard condition common in community supervision (probation, parole, supervised release, etc.).
A basic premize has been that when offenders associate with another it frequently leads to more serious noncompliance, such as drug use or other criminal conduct.
Association on the job or during treatment is not usually considered criminal association.
It is hard to ascertain how many supervision cases are actually revoked for the technical violation of criminal association.
Prior to the advent of social networking sites (SNS) criminal association violations were sometimes detected during a chance home visit or possibly a prison letter found in an offender s possession.
Unfortunately they too often were first discovered in a police report of all individuals arrested with an offender during a new crime.
However, offenders are now associating with one another in increasing numbers on social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook.
This trend raises the interesting possibility that supervision officers can be more proactive in detecting criminal associations as opposed to waiting for an offender s arrest report to identify their problematic associates.
What kind of numbers are we talking about?
One recent case found almost 15% of one offender s total friends were individuals they had meet while serving time in prison.
This may be an extreme case but even one criminal association may be enough to get an offender into noncompliance.
SNS are used by offenders in much the same way as the general public, i.e. to communicate and maintain contact with friends and relatives and to make new contacts who share similar interests.
However, when supervised offenders have contact with other offenders via a SNS, they are violating their association condition.
What kind of trouble are we talking about?
Supervised offenders have been posted on their Facebook wall such antisocial activities as:
Bragging about criminal conduct, including showing images of drug use and gun possession;
Warning other associations about police investigations;
Threatening alleged informants and witnesses
It is ironic that many of these activities are posted in public areas of an offender s profile.
However, most SNS also allow individuals to send private messages to one another.
With mobile phones, a SNS presence can provide immediate access to one s criminal associates.
The contact is not only immediate but can also be simultaneous with all of one s fellow felons.
If they are publicizing such activities to the world we can only surmise what are they communicating privately among themselves.
