Anti-stalking legislation, recidivism and the mentally disordered stalker

In December of 1999, New York became the last of the fifty States to formally approve anti-stalking legislation, with the goal of facilitating early intervention in potentially dangerous situations. Prior to the passage of the Clinic Access and Anti-stalking Law of 1999, local law enforcement was only able to prosecute stalking behavior through the use of legal prohibitions against other pursuit behaviors such as harassment and menacing. This study examines the effect of the Clinic Access and Anti-Stalking Law on stalking recidivism, using a population of 217 mentally disordered individuals arrested for stalking (n = 68) or other pursuit behaviors ( n = 149) in the five years immediately following the passage of the legislation, and referred for evaluation to the Bellevue Hospital Center Forensic Psychiatry Clinic. Additional data was obtained from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. Logistic regression analysis was unable to demonstrate that individuals charged with stalking were less likely to repeat stalking behavior than individuals charged with other pursuit behaviors. The study further attempted to explore stalking recidivism as a function of the prior relationship between the stalker and the victim, the level of violence in the stalking episode, and the stalker's diagnosed mental disorder. However, what appeared to be more important to the prevention of future recidivism was the sentence imposed on the stalker subsequent to arrest and conviction.