Investigators using the Internet to apprehend sex offenders: findings from the Second National Juvenile Online Victimization Study

This paper discusses the types of undercover investigations conducted on the Internet. Computer-assisted telephone interviews were conducted with police about 544 undercover cases ending in arrest for an Internet-related sex crime against a minor in 2006. The two most common types of undercover investigations involved police posing online as minors (76%) and undercover police investigations of child pornography (20%). Additionally, a few investigators were posing as adults having access to minors to sell or wanting to purchase sex with a minor (4%). The findings of this paper are a first step in understanding the efficacy of various types of investigations.