Harmonising Anti-Stalking Laws

Over the last few decades stalking has become increasingly prevalent, not just in the United States, but throughout the civilized world. Hardly a week goes by without the media reporting some instance of stalking, or some new manifestation of it. Many cases are relatively trivial, while others end in rape, brutal assault, or murder. For those who are subject to the full attentions of a committed, obsessed stalker, the effects can alter their lives irrevocably. In July 1986 a young real estate agent, Suzy Lamplugh, disappeared when she went to show a client round a house in southwest London. It is now assumed that she was stalked, kidnapped, and then murdered. Initially, the fact that she had been stalked was unrecognized and unreported, presumably because no one thought that it was an important facet of the crime perpetrated against her. Indeed, even when her parents set up a charity, the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, to campaign for improved personal safety, they did not at first recognize that stalking had been an important ingredient in what had happened to her. At the time, stalking was a little-known phenomenon, at least in the U.K. Since then, stalking has grown as a legal and social phenomenon. Many social commentators and psychologists see it is a problem that is aggravated by the Internet and other modern advances in communication. The anonymity which those media provide serve as an invitation to the naive to assume risks not heretofore in existence, just as it provides an opportunity for others to abuse those less wary. In addition, stalking has now become an international crime, present in almost every country on earth and perpetrated increasingly across national boundaries. Although every country takes measures to protect its citizens, we will show that the nature of stalking makes it a crime that is peculiarly difficult to combat across cultural and national divides. I. WHAT IS STALKING? Today the term "stalking" has acquired a radically different and an altogether more ominous meaning. "Stalking" denotes a crime in which a person pursues the victim, often obsessively. It is a crime manifesting itself in numerous forms because stalkers know no boundaries to the deviousness of their imaginations. In 1998 the British Crime Surveys (BCS or Survey) listed the following as "Types of Persistent and Unwanted Attention": forcing sexual action, use of physical force, unwanted items (e.g., gifts), obscene phone calls, threat of violence, unwanted letters or cards, waiting outside victim's place of work or study, waiting outside victim's house, touching or grabbing victim, refusing to take no for an answer, following victim, physically intimidating victim, silent phone calls, or forcing a conversation.2 In a survey carried out in the United States, the National Institute of Justice Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (NIJCDC) listed the following as examples of stalking: following, spying, or standing outside victim's IMAGE FORMULA7 home; making unwanted phone calls; sending or leaving unwanted letters or items; vandalizing property; and killing or threatening to kill family pet.3 Furthermore, the NIJCDC said in its April 1998 paper: Stalking generally refers to harassing or threatening behavior that an individual engages in repeatedly, such as following a person, appearing at a person's home or place of business, making harassing phone calls, leaving written messages or objects, or vandalizing a person's property. These actions may or may not be accompanied by a credible threat of serious harm, and they may or may not be precursors to an assault or murder.4 The only difference, therefore, between the definitions of stalking on either side of the Atlantic is that stalkers in the United Kingdom (U.K.) do not kill or threaten to kill family pets. Doubtless it is an innovation that will soon travel. The problem for legislators, however, is defining this behavior in a way that combines the coherence and certainty that the law demands with the flexibility necessary to deal with this problem. …