Legal definition

‘Stalking’ may be a new word in its current context, but the behaviour itself has long been recognized in criminal justice circles. Indeed, it has been dealt with in various ways since at least the eighteenth century. Existing laws relied, however, on prosecuting stalking related crimes such as trespass, breaking and entering, criminal damage and threats to kill. By the end of the 1980s it was becoming increasingly clear that these laws were inadequate in deterring stalkers and protecting their victims.

Rather than modify existing laws to deal with this complex crime, legislators throughout many Western nations moved to specifically criminalize stalking. The impetus for developing the first stalking laws was the tragic murder in 1989 of American sitcom actress Rebecca Schaeffer (My Sister Sam) by the disordered fan and stalker Robert Bardo. A food of stalking legislation has emerged over the past decade, beginning in California in 1991 and extending to the rest of the United States of America, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Similar laws are now being considered or enacted in continental Europe and parts of Asia.

The framing of legislation has been confounded by the problem of defining a criminal activity that comprises a series of actions each of which, when taken individually, may constitute legitimate behaviour (e.g. sending flowers or waiting outside a person's workplace).