As the Emily Maitlis case brings the phenomenon of stalking back to the front pages, Kent Law Clinic solicitor Hannah Uglow says ‘until we recognise this behaviour as a health issue we are failing victims and perpetrators alike.
‘Harassment or stalking are crimes of persistence. They are often made up of unremarkable incidents and don’t attract attention. The perpetrator is at a loss to understand how their presence at a particular place can be deemed to be an aggressive act. This unwanted or obsessive attention by an individual or group towards another person can create a prison around the recipient.
‘The most alarming aspect in the case of BBC presenter Emily Maitlis is that her ‘stalker’ had been convicted and imprisoned yet was able to write to her from prison and again while living in a bail hostel.
‘The Prison Estate’s legal framework specifically provides for the monitoring of communications between convicted prisoners and their victims. The Prison Service Instruction 49/2011 contains numerous provisions designed to protect the victim from unwanted contact. In such a high profile case this should be easy to spot. It is perhaps indicative of the impact of cuts on the Prison Service that there are cracks showing in the ability to enforce even the simplest of rules.
‘So what went wrong? Maitlis makes a number of good points in her comments and her ability to empathise is striking. She said ‘Whatever treatment he’s had isn’t working as a cure and he is obviously also a victim in this’. It is widely reported how Prisons are unable to fulfil prisoner sentence plans and provide the offender treatment programs identified for each individual. Prisons in crisis or prisons are the crisis?
‘Stalking is the result of delusion and obsessive compulsive behaviours that our state criminal justice and mental health systems cannot manage. We blame the cuts but surely it goes deeper into a cultural belief that we can simply lock people away and the problem disappears. Whether detained in prison or under the Mental Health Act the essence of Maitlis observation remains the same, the treatment, the cause of this form of behaviour is not addressed.
‘Further Maitlis describes dealing with the police. Often each incident being dealt with by a new officer and the trauma exacerbated by having to go over the entire history just to ensure they have the context, that the persistence, and the feeling of fear whether the threat is real or imagined, is brought home to them.
‘We have made great strides in dealing with harassment in the criminal law and under prosecution policy. It is the limitations on the police and prisons that stand out in this case. Last year Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate conducted a joint inspection of how the police and the Crown Prosecution Service tackle crimes of harassment and stalking. This report sets out a series of recommendations with laudable aims but until we recognise this behaviour as a health issue we are already failing victims and perpetrators alike.’
Hannah Uglow, is a solicitor in the Kent Law Clinic, part of Kent Law School.