| In recent years 'stalking' has become the focus of considerable attention among criminal justice system agencies, the media, and the public alike. The emerging recognition of stalking as a distinct form of violence in the late 1980's prompted a swift response among North American legislatures. By the early nineties nearly every jurisdiction in North America had some form of "anti-stalking" law. In 1993, Canada amended the Criminal Code to include an anti-stalking law, formally codified as "criminal harassment." Despite the immense publicity surrounding stalking, however, there is very little published research on stalking or the individuals who perpetrate this crime. The purpose of the present investigation was to describe the demographic, criminological, and psychological characteristics of a sample of persons charged with criminal harassment. Fifty-four persons charged with criminal harassment were selected from a large, Canadian, pretrial centre and were compared to three equal-sized groups of persons charged with one of the following types of offences: (1) random Criminal Code offences; (2) assault offences; or, (3) other stalking-like offences. Overall, it was found that persons charged with criminal harassment differed from the other offence groups on a number of characteristics across all three dimensions. In view of these differences, it is concluded that the characteristics of criminal harassment perpetrators may be an important consideration for devising future policies and procedures to deal with criminal harassment cases. |
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