Overview of the Act
- The purpose of this Act is to create a new civil stalking protection order to protect members of the public from risks associated with stalking.
- The Act makes provision for a new order which will:
- be available on application by the police to a magistrates’ court;
- enable the imposition of both prohibitions and requirements on the perpetrator; and
- have a criminal penalty for breach.
- The new order is designed for use particularly in cases where existing interventions are not always applicable, namely when:
- the stalking occurs outside of a domestic abuse context, or where the perpetrator is not a current or former intimate partner of the victim (so called ‘stranger stalking’); or
- the criminal threshold has not, or has not yet, been met (such as while a criminal case is being built), or the victim does not support a prosecution.
- The intention of this Act is to provide the police with an additional tool with which to protect victims of stalking and to fill a gap within the existing protective order regime.
