How Do Police Respond to Stalking? An Examination of the Risk Management Strategies and Tactics Used in a Specialized Anti-Stalking Law Enforcement Unit

How do police respond to and manage complaints of stalking? To answer this question, we conducted a 3-phase study. First, we reviewed the literature to identify risk management tactics used to combat stalking. Second, we asked a group of police officers to review those tactics for completeness and group them into categories reflecting more general risk management strategies. The result was 22 categories of strategies. Finally, we used qualitative methods to evaluate the files of 32 cases referred to the specialized anti-stalking unit of a metropolitan police department. We coded specific risk management tactics and strategies used by police. Results indicated that a median number of 19 specific tactics from 7 general strategies were used to manage risk. Also, the implementation of strategies and tactics reflected specific characteristics of the cases (e.g., perpetrator risk factors, victim vulnerability factors), suggesting that the risk management decisions made by police were indeed strategic in nature. Qualitative analyses indicated that some of the strategies and tactics were more effective than others. We discuss how these findings can be used to understand and use stalking risk management more generally, as well as improve research on the efficacy of risk assessment and management for stalking

A multivariate model of stalking behaviours

In order to reveal the variations that exist among stalkers in terms of actual stalking behaviours the range of offence actions that should be examined was derived from theoretical accounts of the differences between offenders. Four distinct thematic foci were hypothesised characterised by sexual, intimate, possessive and aggressive-destructive modes of offender-victim interaction. To test these hypotheses 50 offences were content analysed into 24 behavioural categories. The occurrence of these categories of behaviour across all offences was examined using SSA-I. A modulating facet was proposed, by analogy with previous studies, of violent sexual assaults that reflected the intensity of personal contact the stalker imposes upon the victim, with the most intense being the most differentiated and least frequent. The results lend support to the existence of a intensity facet that modulates all four aspects identified from the published literature, providing further evidence for a radex of criminality. This radex model is used to indicate biases in the current sample of cases by postulating implicit elements for future study. The implication of the radex model of stalking for the management of and interventions in stalking are also considered as the basis for future explorations