New guidance is to make it easier for police to protect people from stalkers, after critics argued the standard of proof required to apply existing powers was too high.
Stalking protection orders (SPOs) make it a criminal offence for perpetrators to approach or contact their victims, carrying a sentence of up to five years. But although stalking was reported to police more than 116,000 times last year, the total number of orders obtained was "in the low hundreds", said Sky News.
About one in five women and one in 10 men experience stalking during their lives, said the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, but stalking protection orders are "not applied for as often as they should be". According to figures obtained by the victims' charity under Freedom of Information laws, 12 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales have issued fewer than 10 per year since SPOs came into force.
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What is a stalking protection order?
Introduced in January 2020, stalking protection orders are a civil order aimed at protecting victims, with breaches deemed a criminal offence. They can stop a perpetrator from entering locations where the victim lives or visits, or contacting the victim in any way.
They differ from restraining orders and from non-molestation orders, which can only be used in the case of partner violence.
SPOs also include "positive requirements", which means that perpetrators may have to carry out actions such as attending a stalking intervention or drug rehabilitation programme, or surrendering their laptop or phones. Police must apply for an SPO on behalf of a victim, and can tailor the requirements to each case.
What is different about the new powers?
Previously, police would have to meet the criminal standard of "beyond reasonable doubt" to obtain an SPO. In many cases, said Sky News, police and courts do not "consider the legal threshold to be met – even when dozens of incidents are reported".
In November 2022, the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and the National Stalking Consortium launched a complaint against the police, finding "systemic issues" in the response to stalking.
Safeguarding Minister Laura Farris has now issued new guidance to all police forces to "apply a lower standard of proof". Police will have to persuade a judge "on the balance of probabilities" that an SPO is appropriate, she said: "a kind of 50-50 test".
Will they make a difference?
Reports of stalking, particularly cyberstalking, are on the rise, with new software being rolled out to help police forces monitor it. But the number of people convicted of stalking in the year to March 2023 was just 1,955, according to the latest official figures: a conviction rate of 1.7%.
This marked "another year of shockingly low conviction rates for stalking cases, and ongoing failures by the criminal justice system when keeping victims informed", Emma Lingley-Clark, interim chief executive of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, told Sky News.
Even legislative reform and improved conviction rates may not be enough to convince victims to report stalking. More than half of the public do not trust the police to solve crimes, according to the latest YouGov survey. More than a third of respondents said they had no faith in authorities to maintain law and order.
Voters are "losing faith in the police after a spate of scandals", said The Times, which has launched a year-long inquiry into the "devastating lack of confidence" and the future of the UK criminal justice system.
Claire Waxman, a stalking victim-turned-campaigner and now victims' commissioner, believes further reform is needed to protect victims. "The problem we have for victims when they report a crime is that they are coming into a very fragmented and backlogged system," she told the paper.
"They are going to come into contact with different officers within the police, then the witness care unit, or the Crown Prosecution Service. There's no seamless process and victims are left to navigate the complexities with very little information and support."
