A risk checklist for stalking: the design and development of a stalking violence risk assessment toolkit for frontline police officers

Stalkers can inflict severe injury upon and have been known to kill their victims. Despite this there exists few violence risk assessment tools designed explicitly for use by law enforcement. Based on the detailed responses of 1,565 stalking victims, a violence risk checklist was developed with the aim of increasing the opportunities of police officers to identify potentially dangerous stalkers. Regression analyses for significant correlates for physical assault per se and for severe violence largely reflected those produced by earlier works. For example, for severe violence (infliction of severe injuries; n = 136), the most important correlate was a high level of victimfear, suggesting that victims are adept at assessing their own risk of stalker violence. Reliability and validity of the checklist were assessed by analyzing police files of stalking cases where the ultimate outcome of stalking was known. The checklist performed well on preliminary tests and these results and the checklist are presented here.