FOREWORD

Since 1978, 49 of the 50 state legislatures and the United 
States Congress have passed some form of computer crime 
statute.  This volume is a compilation of those statutes as 
of June 30, 1990.  The sole exception is the statute shown 
for Massachusetts, which had been passed and submitted to 
the Governor, but had not been signed into law at the time 
this compilation was completed.

To facilitate comparison of computer crime statutes from 
jurisdiction to jurisdiction, we have chosen to group 
certain features in the same sequence in each presentation, 
regardless of how the sequences that legislatures themselves 
may have used.  The sequence we have chosen is as follows:

*	Title
*	Definitions
*	Offenses
*	Elements of Offenses
*	Penalties
*	Venue
*	Civil Remedy
*	Legislative Purpose (if stated)
*	Miscellaneous
*	Citation
*	Source

A few of these require a brief explanation.
Title.  Where a state has called its statute a computer 
crime statute, we use that name.  Otherwise, the title used 
is the title of the overall code section in which the 
computer crime provisions appear.

Offenses.  We have used the titles of offenses used by the 
legislatures except where the legislatures have used a 
general title of little descriptive value, such as 
"Offenses" or "Acts."  Where the text of the statute is 
clear, we supply a title for the offense in brackets.

Elements.  The elements are those specific acts that 
constitute the offenses.

Penalties.  Where the penalties have been separately stated, 
we state them separately.  But where they have been stated 
as part of the section setting forth the offense, we do not 
repeat the whole offense, stating in brackets that the 
elements have been set forth above.

Citation.  The citation is a correct way to cite the whole 
statute.  Each of the sections may be cited separately in 
the same form.

Source.  The source, primarily of interest to lawyers within 
a given state, is the original and any amending acts of the 
legislature from which the code sections are derived.

Every effort has been made to make these materials complete 
and accurate.  Computer crime statutes are here in their 
entirety.  

Some changes in type face have been made to produce a 
uniform format in this publication, but no changes have been 
made in the numbering of sections or subsections.  As noted 
above, the sequences of some statutes have been altered.  
Ellipsis points (* * *) have been used sparingly and in only 
two circumstances.  First, we have omitted materials in 
general criminal statutes when they are irrelevant to 
computer crime.  For example, see the omissions in the 
Alaska statute, where computer provisions are included in 
general criminal statutes.  Second, we have used ellipsis 
points occasionally to eliminate repetition of materials 
already set forth in a prior section.  E.g., see the 
Penalties section of the Nevada statute.

This compilation was prepared for the National Institute of 
Justice by the Institute for Law and Justice, Inc., under 
Contract No. OJP-85-C-006.  The Program Monitor for NIJ was 
Jonathan Budd.

Hugh Nugent organized and directed the project for the 
Institute of Law and Justice.  Claudia Lopez-Muniz assisted 
in the original compilation work in 1988.  Neal Miller 
updated the materials in 1990.  Dina Miller, Catherine 
Miller, and Mary Pat Clancy were responsible for most of the 
data input.