The Factor of Digital Inequality (Divide) and Its Impact on the Geography of Cybercrime

The «digital divide» reflects the uneven territorial distribution of information and telecommunication technologies. This phenomenon ought to have an influence on the opportunities for implementing criminal intentions. Unfortunately, the existing criminological works on computer crime (cybercrime) do not provide enough information on its geography. At the same time, the publications of recent years recognize that the existence of a digital divide as a condition for crime. However, this statement has not yet been proven by facts. The current work is devoted to solving this problem. The conducted research revealed some drawbacks in record-keeping and registration that influence the scope of our understanding of the geography of cybercrime. The author presents the calculated values regarding the condition of computer crime in federal districts and specific regions. The article contains a rating of the regions by their level of computer crime, which is then compared to the rating of the regions by their level of digitization. Some generalized conclusions are drawn on this basis.