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Question 1

What 3 publications would you say have been most influential in your work?

Answer 1

1. Sherman - Arrest, comparisons, tracking
2. Mullen 2009 - Typologies
3. HMIC. 2017 - Poor response

Question 2

Tell me about Sherman’s study?

Answer 2

Sherman et al 1992

1200 domestic assault cases in US
6 months after arrest
Had the option of arresting perpetrator but didn’t v arrest
They had 4 outcome measures -
Reports to same location.
arrests again for violence,
same suspect v victim
and face to face interviews with victims.

Varied according to characteristic.

No long term affect but short term affect of 30 days
Different impact on different section of community
Employed and married more likely to be deterred
12 months on arrest had actually escalated situation

Question 3

Tell me about Mullen et al 2009 study?

Answer 3

X

Question 4

Tell me about HMIC 2017?

Answer 4

X

Question 5

Where does your work fit into the literature?

Answer 5

• Existing literature focuses heavily on domestic abuse and domestic violence
• There is limited literature that focuses on stalking but they group domestic stalkers and non-domestic stalkers together
• Stalking research is generally focused on mental health and murder
• Nothing out there that focuses on what actually works and the impact of each intervention
• My work separates non DA stalking and DA stalking and focuses purely on interventions and investigation

Question 6

Where did you draw the line on what to include in your literature review?

Answer 6

• Challenge
• All interesting
• Did write a lot that didn’t end up there because i was going off on a tangent
• stuck closely to my research aims

Question 7

How did the literature inform your choice of topic and the thesis overall?

Answer 7

• Significantly
  
  • Identified a gap
  • Whilst also finding the literature really interesting
• Focused on Sherman - typologies

Question 8

What are the key names in this area?

Answer 8

• Sherman ()
• Mackenzie ()
• Mullen ()
• Moncton Smith -

Question 9

Why is your PhD important?

Answer 9

• Super complaint from national stalking consortium (21 organisations)
• Sig resarch gap around impact of not doing anything, warnings, arrest, court orders, imprisonment for non-da stalkers
• HMIC - ‘we have, however been unable to find any resarch that proves whether issuing a police information notice is more or less effective than any other form of police action’
• Police are criticised heavily for poor investigations

Question 10

What are your 3 research aims?

Answer 10

1. Examine stalking and analyse the interventions available to police officers (legislation, existing lit, interventions)
2. Explore diff types of policing interventions on non-da cases (identify, record and assess impact over 18 months)
3. Seek to understand quant data by capturing experiences of practitioners and police leaders (semi interviews, practitioners and stalking advocate)

Question 11

Why is stalking difficult to define?

Answer 11

Because there are so many different types of behaviours that could constitute stalking - everything from standing outside watching to buying gifts

CPS have listed behaviours but not defined it

Question 12

Why did you go with the Paladin definition of stalking?

Answer 12

1. Goes further than other definitions
2. Consistent with the language officers are trained on (four)
3. It isn’t too wide that everything could be considered stalking but not too narrow that we dont have stalking cases to analyse

Question 13

What definition of stalking did you use?

Answer 13

Paladin

1. Pattern of unwanted, fixated and obsessive behaviour
2. Intrusive
3. Causes fear of violence or serious alarm or distress

Question 14

What are the pitfalls of your data?

Answer 14

• Biggest pitfall is that this is solely reliant on a victim of crime picking up the phone and reporting stalking again.
• It is also reliant on neither a victim or perpetrator having a change of circumstances, moving house, changing jobs etc

But overcome that by:

• Using a big enough sample size - HMIC use 112
• Coupling with qual data

Question 15

What are the key academics saying about prison?

Answer 15

10 year max for starters
Mullen et al - treating stalkers very difficult in prison
Cater 2016 - serves no purpose for imprisonment without dealing with MH
Sex offenders - treated offenders less likely to offend

Question 16

What are the lit review saying about court orders?

Answer 16

Home office review of SPOs - 14% breaches of order an forces not using them.

Orders are potentially a trigger.

Strand 2011 - no differences in revictimsation if RO used in Sweden but did have an impact if lower risk offenders

Holt et al 2002 - 2691 women - 80% reduction in violence in 12 months if used permanent protection order

Question 17

What lit review is for arrest?

Answer 17

Cho et al 2010 - arrest of DV reduced revictimsation by 43%
Berk et al 1992 - reduced revictimsation if employed
Positive arrest policies not always followed
Garza et al 2020 - evidence, injury, witnesses, alcohol and history of violence all increased likelihood of arrest

Question 18

Who was against arrest?

Answer 18

Hirschel 1992 - 686 cases - no sig impact on future offending
Peralta et al 2015 - 101 victims in refuges - arrest policies put women off

Question 19

What is sequential explanatory design?

Answer 19

• Obtaining data in two consecutive stages
• Quant first, analyse
• Then qual second
• Makes a connection between the two rather than two distinct analyses
• It combines the what (quant) and the why (qual) - neither are superior to one another

Question 20

What are the pitfalls of using sequential explanatory design?

Answer 20

• More time consuming because it wasn’t concurrent
• By the time it came to do doing the qual, the force had actually moved on since I gathered the data
• Whereas had I done them concurrently - it would have been live
• Temptation to rush the analysis phase to get onto qual
• Difficult to navigate the qual scenarios without giving my data away

Question 21

What were your criteria for inclusion?

Answer 21

Criteria for inclusion

Non-domestic relationship between the perpetrator and victim

Stalking that meets the Paladin (2019) definition of stalking

Stalking behaviour reported to the research force within 2018 and 2019

Identifiable perpetrator and victim and sufficient information to perform meaningful analysis

Question 22

What was your criteria for preclusion?

Answer 22

Criteria for preclusion

Domestic relationship between the perpetrator and the victim

Behaviour that does not meet the threshold for stalking behaviour

Stalking behaviour reported to the research force, that was not reported in 2018 and 2019

Victim or the perpetrator has not been identifiable or there is insufficient information to obtain basic characteristics

Question 23

Tell me about your quant data analysis?

Answer 23

Descriptive analysis

• summarise data and ID patterns
• key characteristics categorised compared with interventions
• enabled me to focus on trends that relate to my research questions
• percentages to see if stalking continued or not - simple and logical
• mean numerical average such as age and time stalked victim

BIGGEST WEAKNESS TO DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS

• can’t be used to make predictions so used an inferential analysis method

Question 24

Tell me about inferential analysis?

Answer 24

Looks at relationships between different variables
Used correlation to understand the relationship
Using inferential variables of a stalker’s characteristics to compare

Example - did a warning impact different types of stalkers in different ways

Inferential statistics helps to suggest explanations for a situation or phenomenon. It allows you to draw conclusions based on extrapolations, and is in that way fundamentally different from descriptive statistics that merely summarize the data that has actually been measured.

Question 25

What are the advantages and disadvantages of descriptive analysis?

Answer 25

A key advantage of descriptive analytics is that it requires only basic math skills and allows you to present otherwise complex data in an easily digestible format. The main disadvantage of descriptive analytics is that it only summarizes data; it doesn’t draw conclusions or test hypotheses.

Question 26

What are the core methods used?

Answer 26

Used a sequential explanatory design mixed methods approach to understand the impact of 5 police interventions to combat non-domestic stalking and how the police investigate it.

Quantitative - 178 cases between 2018 and 2019 analysed and then tracked for 18 months in a research force to see how the stalker reacted to one of 5 interventions.

Qualitative - practitioners - 5 senior leaders, 3 frontline, charity

Then used descriptive analysis to identify trends And inferential analysis to unpick certain characteristics and start to draw conclusions.

Question 27

What are the limitations of your quant data?

Answer 27

• 178 cases - wouldnt have covered every case
• doesn’t include mal comms
• reliant on victim calling
• doesnt take into account the

Question 28

What are the limitations to your quant data?

Answer 28

Reliant on victim calling
Doesnt take into account change in circs
178 doesnt encompass all stalking
Doesn’t include mal comms
Reliant on accuracy of police data

Question 29

What are the limitations of your qual data?

Answer 29

• reliant on truthful and honesty speaking to a DCI
• biases
• im a lower rank than many interviewees

Question 30

What is the main contribution of your work?

Answer 30

Analysis of warnings on non-da stalkers

1. Warnings were associated with the highest continuation rates of stalking, which provides at least a preliminary indication that warnings are an ineffective means of preventing stalking behaviour, supporting the recommendation by HMIC that a warning a should not be used in cases where stalking has been reported.
   2. Due to competing demands, complexity and risk, stalking should be investigated by specially trained investigators with sufficient time, support and knowledge. Frontline response police officers are not the most appropriate resource to investigate this crime.
   3. In order to protect victims of non-domestic stalking, police officers should seek to arrest stalkers with a view to obtaining a court order or, where prohibitive orders are ineffective or the risk towards a victim or the wider public is so great, a term of imprisonment.