Nicoleta Apolozan
She is a police officer (sociologist), works with The Research and Crime Prevention Institute within General Inspectorate of Romanian Police.
She graduated from the National School of Political and Administrative Studies (2005). She also graduated with a Master's degree in Public Policy and European Integration (2007) from the same university, as well as a Master's degree in International Police Cooperation (2013) from the "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" Police Academy. She is currently a PhD student at the School of Advanced Studies of the Romanian Academy, in the field of Sociology.
She has participated in numerous studies on the etiology of crime and its specific forms of manifestation, including "Risks and vulnerabilities of students in the online environment" (2021), a study conducted within the RO Cyberex Project - Improving, cooperating and preventing in the fight against cyber crime (2021).
Her areas of interest for research include studies on the perception of public safety, police authority and public confidence in this institution.
Sessions
With the technological development and the increased access of people of different ages to more and more devices connected to the Internet, crime has either shifted from the real life environment to the online world, either new vulnerabilities and types of attacks have emerged that can only take place online. Without proper knowledge and appropriate skills, the risk of becoming a victim of cybercrime is high. Children are surrounded and have instant access to a myriad of information and if they are not taught how to handle it, they can easily endanger themselves or others. Therefore, law enforcement has to tackle cyber offences in which children are involved more often than before and must be kept up to date to the latest technologies and special juvenile hearing techniques to investigate these types of cases. This paper, through a qualitative analysis of interviews with law enforcement officers and with teachers from ten counties in Romania, intends to identify the main challenges that the people dealing with children have faced in handling cyber cases and ways in which the investigation and knowledge about such crimes can be improved. Furthermore, an opinion poll was conducted with children aged 10 to 18 years old to find out the unpleasant situations which they have been confronted with on the internet. The results will be used to train police officers in Romania which deal with prevention or investigation of cybercrimes and to make them more aware of the conducts that children have on the Internet, the risky situations which they are confronted with and with what determines them to commit or become a victim of such crimes, according to their age.