Stalking Awareness Month
January 2006

Message from Director Diane M. Stuart

January is Stalking Awareness Month. According to the most recent statistics, more than one million people across the country are stalked each year. Though stalking is a crime in every state, it is often misunderstood, because of its unique nature and varying degrees of intensity. It is critically important that the criminal justice and advocacy communities are well-trained in the dynamics of stalking so they can provide effective safety and support to victims, as well as enforce the existing stalking laws. The Department of Justice is committed to keeping stalking victims safe and holding stalkers accountable for their deplorable actions---not just in January, but in every month of the year.

OVW Has Made a Difference

The Stalking Resource Center

OVW funds the Stalking Resource Center, a component of the National Center for Victims of Crime. Launched in July 2000, the dual mission of the Center is to raise national awareness of stalking and to encourage the development and implementation of multidisciplinary responses to stalking in local communities across the country. The Stalking Resource Center serves V iolence Against Women Act grantees; criminal and civil justice system practitioners; community based agencies; media representatives; stalking victims; and the general public.

Training
Stalking Resource Center staff are available to participate in training events sponsored by practitioners on the local, state, and national level. Topics include:

• stalking dynamics
• legal remedies
• multidisciplinary efforts
• practitioner-specific practices
• cyberstalking

Information Clearinghouse
The information clearinghouse provides a wide range of useful information for practitioners. Materials include:

• statistics on the prevalence of stalking
• practitioner-specific educational tools
• compilations of state and federal legislation and protection order statutes
• case law digests of civil and criminal cases
• multidisciplinary curricula
• promising practices and innovative strategies
• model protocols, forms, and procedures

Practitioners' Network
To support interest in local stalking responses and to foster effective multidisciplinary work, the Stalking Resource Center has assembled a network of local practitioners representing diverse communities throughout the country. These local "points-of-contact" help to identify emerging issues and promising practices in the field.

Website

A continually growing resource for practitioners and victims, the Stalking Resource Center website provides diverse resources, including fact sheets on federal statutes, an annotated stalking bibliography, summaries of state stalking laws, a guide to online resources, statistical overviews, practitioner profiles, and more.

The Supplemental Victimization Survey (SVS)

In 2004, OVW entered into an agreement with the Bureau of Justice Statistics to develop a survey on stalking to be administered as a supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The NCVS is administered by the Census Bureau to approximately 80,000 households and over 100,000 individuals aged 12 and over. The NCVS records crimes both reported and not reported to the police.

Census Bureau field representatives, also known as the interviewers, will begin data collection for the stalking survey (its formal title is the Supplemental Victimization Survey) in January, 2006 and will continue through June, 2006. The survey seeks to uncover information about stalking that pertains to:

• the types of incidents perpetrated by stalkers;
• how stalking impacted the life of the victim;
• the measures the victim took to protect him/herself;
• how the criminal justice system responded to the stalking victim;
• the financial cost of stalking to the victim;
• the kinds of technology used by offenders to stalk their victims; and
• other crimes committed during stalking incidents.

The survey findings will provide much-needed insight into the crime of stalking. It is hoped that the findings will help inform training for law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges who are often faced with stalking cases. The findings will also assist in training of victim advocates on the types of safety measures and counseling services that will be most effective for stalking victims. The first reports resulting from the survey should be released in early 2007.