Policing Across and Within Metaverses: How Immersiveness Changes the Role of Police in Cyberspace

Abstract Explicit abusive behaviour in the metaverse is increasing, so regulators and other supranational bodies are considering whether this immersive virtual space should be policed and how. In this article, we address this question by arguing that involving national and international police organizations in the metaverse is necessary and demands regulatory action. First, we show that the scope of criminal law should extend to the metaverse and that a policing mechanism is needed to ensure its enforcement. Then, we highlight the shortcomings of existing ways of policing the Web and argue that only a co-governance system involving platforms, online communities, and law enforcement agencies can address the challenges of policing the metaverse. We examine how this undertaking may work using two Levels of Abstraction (LoAs). Through the first LoA, we analyse the metaverse environment from the outside and investigate how policing efforts should be allocated between States across multiple platforms, suggesting ways to solve jurisdictional conflicts. Through the second LoA, we analyse a given metaverse from within and assess the limits of police powers concerning user surveillance and the possibility of performing virtual ‘arrests’. In both cases, we show how the immersiveness of the metaverse will change the role of the police online. We conclude the article with recommendations for establishing a policing mechanism in the metaverse.