Organizational and Legal Mechanisms for Improving the Prevention of Deviant Behavior in the Digital Space and Cyber-Radicalization Among young people

Abstract

The rapid shift of young people's education, communication and leisure into the digital space has created new risks that traditional institutions of social control – the family, the school and the mahalla – are unable to monitor adequately. Two of these risks are usually studied separately: deviant behavior in the digital space (cyberbullying, trolling, online gambling, participation in self-harm communities and illegal online activity) and cyber-radicalization, i.e. young people falling under the influence of extremist ideology via the Internet. The aim of this article is to substantiate the interrelationship between these two phenomena and to develop organizational and legal proposals for improving their prevention in the Republic of Uzbekistan. The study uses systemic-structural, comparative legal and logical-legal analysis and content analysis of the academic literature, national legislation and the approaches of the European Union, the United Kingdom and Finland. The results show that digital deviance and cyber-radicalization share common determinants – personal vulnerability, the online disinhibition effect and the primacy of closed-group norms – and that the first two of the five identified stages of cyber-radicalization (vulnerability and exposure) largely coincide with the risk factors for digital deviance. Five gaps in national legislation are identified, including the absence of a legal definition of cyberbullying, of specific forms of preventing offences in the digital space, of platform obligations to protect minors, and of a rehabilitative procedure for young people influenced by radical ideas who have not committed a crime. A three-level prevention model (universal, targeted and individual) is proposed, together with an outcome-based system for evaluating effectiveness. Seven recommendations for improving legislation and practice are formulated, aimed at shifting the prevention system from a reactive and restrictive model to a proactive, targeted and multi-agency one.