Edinburgh Napier University

  Research exploring cybercrime policing has tended to focus on specialist policing units on the one hand (Harkin, Whelan and Change, 2018), and on the inherent limits of public policing organisations on the other; multi jurisdictional, insufficient training, limited resources and capacities, distant offenders, international relations and cooperative capacities (Yar and Steinmetz, 2019; Holt et al., 2015). Little effort has been given to exploring the extant capacities, or indeed practices that are already in operation in frontline policing that contribute to public cybersecurity and crime prevention; giving advice, responding to calls and taking reports, supporting victims informally, community prevention, responsiveness to local needs. This study will begin to address this knowledge gap by mapping the potential for existing local policing practices to be deployed to sit alongside and reinforce national centralised cybercrime prevention work.