Stalking and Violence

The perverse beauty of the crime of stalking is that it provides a fertile Petri dish for the study of interpersonal violence. Stalking per se does not include any violent behaviour, if we understand violence to be an intentional act of aggression against another human being that results in, or is likely to result in, physical injury. Stalking, instead, has historically been denned as a pattern of threat or harassment that induces fear of harm in the victim (Meloy, 1999a). There is a logical relationship between the two—why would someone be fearful of a pattern of threat or harassment if he or she didn't think there might be an attack? But violence does not have to be an aspect of stalking behaviour, and is not an element of the crime of stalking in most jurisdictions. In fact, the crime itself was codified to prevent acts of violence that were, in retrospect, sadly predictable (Saunders, 1998). Therefore, we have two independent variables—stalking and violence—that can be empirically measured to see if there is, in fact, a relationship between them. The independence of variables in research is important, but in all violence research, the frequency of acts of violence is also critical to study For example, the United States is a well-chosen geographical area in which to study violence because of its high base rate, especially in southern and coastal cities. Taiwan, on the other hand, would not be a good place to study violence because of its very low frequency. Canada is even better, not because its rate exceeds that of the US, but because there is one federal database of violent crime and criminals, making the task of longitudinal research not only possible, but also quite productive (Quinsey et al., 1998). People research when they