Stalking in Upper Austria - Results from a Victim Survey and recommondations for legal handling

Description

In July 2006, Austria implemented the anti-stalking-law-package which consists of one article within criminal law and several accompanying measures in the police and civil law sector. As the statistics infer, there are many problems with putting the articles into practise. Furthermore it could be presumed that the article contradicts constitutional principles as it is indeterminate and extremely extensive. Hence, especially the criminal law article has to be reformatted, obviously in an offender-liberal way. As these suggestions are likely to be complained about by organisations for victim protection, the survey has evaluated the requirements of stalking victims to validate the proposed modifications. A victim survey in Upper Austria has examined several facts related to stalking, such as the incidence of stalking, the offender-victim relationship, stalking behaviours and the impact on the victims. In addition to that we analysed whether the victims claimed for a restraining order or not and if not, why they didn’t do so. The respondents were also questioned as to further reform ideas related to restraining orders, restorative justice, their desired form of reaction and if they would like to have more of a voice within a criminal proceeding. Results regarding the central research questions will be reported. Based on those findings, we could develop a typology of stalker tactics and draw some conclusions for the reform of the Anti-Stalking-Law.

Period	11 Sept 2009
Event title	Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology
Event type	Conference
Location	SloveniaShow on map