This July, the College of Social Science celebrates Disability Independence Day and recognizes members of the Michigan State community working to advance equity, belonging and independence among the disabled community. Our July Access Torch, Kexin Cui, is a doctoral student in the School of Criminal Justice whose research interests center around cybercrime and cyber victimization as well as the intersections of disability, vulnerability, and experiences of crime and safety.
Cui earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Criminal Justice and Criminology from Northeastern University and arrived at Michigan State in 2024. She became interested in cybercrime after working with a dark web hacker network research group, and having a near-miss fraud experience of her own. “I want to understand who gets victimized online and why, and how geographic context, social factors, and individual characteristics all shape someone’s risk,” she explained.
Cui was drawn to Michigan State by its “strong set” of cybercrime faculty, especially Dr. Tom Holt, and the opportunity to join “a graduate student culture that felt genuinely warm and collaborative rather than competitive.”
Cui’s initial research into disability and fear of crime stemmed from a collaboration with her advisor and another colleague that was eventually published in the Journal of Criminal Justice.
For that study, Cui says, “We found that people with cognitive disabilities and autism reported significantly higher fear of violent crime,” and that this fear was degrading their quality of life- even in situations where they hadn’t necessarily been personally victimized. “That last part really stuck with me,” she said. “You don’t have to actually experience crime for it to already be costing you something.”
Through Cui’s general research into who becomes a target for online victimization and why, including a variety of social and geographic factors, the prevalence of disabled individuals kept coming up. “It was this really important thread that ran through a lot of what I was seeing,” she explained. “People with disabilities face many structural barriers already, ones that follow them into online spaces, too.”
One thing Cui and others have discovered through this research is the importance of proactivity. Being ahead of the curve and providing individuals with informational resources and fostering trust between law enforcement and the disabled community rather than waiting for instances of fraud and victimization to occur is an important step toward fraud mitigation.
“As more systems that we use in our daily life move online, people with disabilities are being asked to navigate spaces where exploitation is real and rising,” Cui said. “Building safer systems and providing targeted support for this population online is something we should be talking about a lot more.”
These efforts can also help the disabled community harbor more independence. “A lot of what independence looks like today involves being able to navigate the internet safely, managing your own finances, and staying connected,” Cui explained. “If people with disabilities are disproportionately targeted online and don’t have the tools or support to protect themselves, that’s another form of independence being quietly eroded.”
Cui’s research shows that independence is not only about physical access; it’s also feeling confident in navigating online spaces. She hopes that through working with these populations, we can begin to break the cycles of fear of crime and mistrust of law enforcement systems that lead to greater instances of fraud.
“When institutions demonstrate that they understand the experiences of people with disabilities, it builds real trust, and trust changes things. People report more, they get help sooner, and they recover better. A justice system that consistently loses its most vulnerable people in the process isn’t truly working the way it should.”
Honorees’ views are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the College of Social Science.