The Guidelines for Stalking Assessment and Management (SAM) are a set of structured professional judgment guidelines for assessment and management of the risk of stalking—a pattern of targeted, repeated, and unwanted intrusive acts—which can cause serious physical or mental harm to victims. The diversity and the number of stalking cases make it difficult for police and other professionals to determine which cases require the greatest assistance to prevent negative outcomes and where to direct assistance to have the greatest effect. The SAM provides a structure for assessing stalking cases in a standardized way in order to help with case prioritization and management decisions. This article provides an overview of the development, structure, and use of the SAM as well as a review of the empirical evidence related to its reliability and validity.
Development
The SAM was designed by a group of Canadian clinicians and academics with a strong history of research in and development of structured professional judgment risk assessment. Led by psychologist Stephen Hart, the same group has authored similar structured professional judgment risk assessment instruments for spousal assault and sexual offending as well as for general violence. The SAM was based in part on a systematic review of the existing stalking research, consistent with recommendations for guidelines in the field of health care. The authors outlined many of the principles that underpin the SAM in a seminal 2002 article on challenges associated with assessing the risk of stalking. The SAM itself was published in 2008 after 3 years of field trials in Sweden and Canada. It was designed to assist professionals dealing with stalking to exercise their best judgment. It allows for immediate, systemic risk management of an ongoing stalking situation, focusing on risk factors associated with the stalking behaviors, the perpetrator’s background and current presentation, and victim vulnerabilities that may exacerbate risk.
How to Use
The SAM is a 100-page manual available in English and Swedish, which guides the user through the process of assessing a stalking case, identifying relevant risk factors, developing risk scenarios and risk management strategies, and stating conclusory opinions. The SAM is intended for use by criminal justice, security, and mental health professionals working in a variety of contexts where complaints of stalking arise. It is intended for use in any case where there is a known or suspected history of stalking by a perpetrator over the age of 18 years.
The SAM must be completed separately for each perpetrator and victim, or group of related victims, being targeted. The risk factors included in the SAM are relevant to those who are known or suspected to have committed stalking. Risk judgments made using the SAM are specific to the current stalking situation and victim and cannot be generalized to apply to other forms of violence toward other people.
Users of the SAM are not required to complete any formal training; however, they should have expertise in individual assessment of stalkers or victims (through training or work-related experience) and expertise more generally in stalking. Users are not required to diagnose any form of mental disorder to use the SAM, making it accessible to nonmental health professionals. Users are required to complete approximately 8–16 hr of directed reading and supervised application of the SAM to be considered competent in its use.
Structure
Like all structured professional judgment instruments, the SAM guides the user to assess a number of risk factors associated with a particular risk outcome. Risk factors in the SAM are divided into three domains: Nature of Stalking includes 10 risk factors relating to the pattern of stalking behavior, Perpetrator Risk Factors are 10 factors reflecting the stalker’s history and psychosocial adjustment, and Victim Vulnerability Factors are 10 factors relating to the victim’s situation and psychosocial adjustment. Each risk factor is rated present (Y), possibly or partially present (?), or absent (N) during the current stalking episode and then separately for past presence outside the current stalking episode. Each risk factor is also rated for its relevance to the hypothesized causes of the person’s stalking behavior. Risk factors identified as highly relevant are those that will be primary targets for interventions to reduce or prevent future stalking.
Once all risk factors are rated, SAM users are instructed to complete risk scenarios: Short narratives informed by their assessment of risk factors that describe the types of future stalking the perpetrator might commit. These scenarios typically canvas what might happen if the stalking continues its current course, if it reduces in intensity or severity, or if it worsens in intensity or severity; also included is a twist scenario where stalking behavior evolves in a new way, perhaps with different behaviors. The scenarios are used to guide the types of risk management that might be implemented with regard to monitoring of the case, treatment of the perpetrator, supervision/ control of the perpetrator, and victim safety planning.
The final step in applying the SAM is to develop a number of conclusory opinions that communicate the main points of the risk assessment in a clear, simple manner that facilitates action. These judgments reflect the opinion of the user and address the following issues:
- Case Prioritization: A judgment about the degree of effort or intervention it will require to prevent the person from committing further stalking. Designed to assist with prioritization of resources where they are limited.
- Risk of Continued Stalking: The likelihood that the stalking of the victim will persist into the future, regardless of its nature or severity.
- Risk of Serious Physical Harm: A judgment about the severity of stalking the perpetrator might commit in future, with a focus on serious or life-threatening stalking-related violence.
Each of these judgments is rated as low, moderate, or high; these categories are associated with different levels of management. Any case judged to be at moderate or high risk or case prioritization should have more management resources focused on the case.
In addition to these judgments, the user makes judgments about the reasonableness of the victim’s fear and whether immediate action is required to prevent harm. The former judgment attempts to capture the extent to which the victim’s level of fear corresponds to the severity of the stalking, given the totality of the circumstances in the case. It is rated as too low, appropriate, or too high and helps to guide decisions about victim safety planning and counseling. A judgment about whether immediate action is required relates to the imminence of any future risk and is rated either No or Emergency, with the latter associated with imminent risk and issues surrounding the duty to warn or protect the victim, and the need for involuntary incapacitation of the perpetrator, or protective shelter for the victim.
Finally, users are instructed to recommend a date for review of the risk assessment. The SAM, like other structured professional judgment instruments, is designed to be valid for approximately 6 months from the date of assessment, with more frequent reassessment recommended if there are marked changes in the case (e.g., a dramatic escalation in the frequency of stalking contacts).
Reliability and Validity
The reliability of the three major SAM conclusory opinions (i.e., case prioritization, risk of continued stalking, and risk of serious physical harm) has been evaluated in five studies between 2009 and 2016, two of which also reported on concurrent and predictive validity. In 2009, a Swedish study evaluated the use of the SAM by police, concluding that police were able to rate all items, and there was a clear positive relationship between the number of items present and overall risk judgments, providing a measure of the structural reliability of the instrument. Subsequent studies have reported mixed interrater reliability results. For Case Prioritization judgments derived using the SAM, agreement has ranged from slight to high (Interclass correlation, ICCA,1 = .39 to .80). Moderate agreement was observed across studies for both Risk of Continued Stalking (ICCA,1 = .71) and Serious Physical Harm (ICCA,1 = .44 to .60) judgments. The study reporting the highest levels of agreement used a sample of only six stalkers for interrater reliability analyses, while the largest such study (NIRR = 62) found the lowest level of agreement for ratings. It should be noted that none of the studies published to date have investigated the reliability of ratings that distinguish between the risk factors’ presence during the current stalking episode versus prior to that time (instead combining ratings into a lifetime score or rating only current presence).
The concurrent validity of SAM conclusory opinions was reported in 2011, through comparison with the results of other risk assessment instruments. SAM opinions correlated with a measure of psychopathy (the Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version) between .26 and .41, while correlations with a measure of general violence risk (the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide) were approximately .20 (controlling for psychopathy). These small to moderate correlations were considered appropriate given that the risk instruments are attempting to assess somewhat different risk outcomes.
The predictive validity of the SAM has been reported once, in a 2016 U.S. study in which the SAM was prospectively rated in 89 (primarily exintimate) stalking cases involving convicted offenders. The Nature of Stalking and Perpetrator Risk Factors were scored in each case and used to make summary judgments (the information required to score Victim Vulnerability factors was not available). Each participant was followed up using police data, self-report, and treating clinician report over an average of 2.5 years to identify subsequent stalking or violent offending. Survival analyses showed that conclusory Case Prioritization opinions were not related to subsequent stalking or violent offending.
However, when the authors calculated a SAM score by assigning numerical values to risk factor ratings in the Nature of Stalking and Perpetrator Background domains, perpetrators with higher total scores reoffended by stalking somewhat more quickly and more often than those with lower scores. The Nature of Stalking domain score alone similarly predicted stalking reoffending, although the Perpetrator score did not. There was no relationship between SAM scores and violent reoffending. Importantly, this study did not evaluate the Victim Vulnerability factors as the authors did not have access to victim information, which may have impacted the predictive validity of the instrument. The authors concluded that the study provided mixed support for the predictive validity of the SAM in clinical forensic settings as a risk assessment instrument for stalking.
References:
- Belfrage, H., & Strand, S. (2009). Validation of the Stalking Assessment and Management checklist (SAM) in law enforcement: A prospective study of 153 cases of stalking in two Swedish police counties. International Journal of Police Science and Management, 11, 67–76. doi:10.1350/ijps.2009.11.1.110
- Foellmi, M. C., Rosenfeld, B., & Galietta, M. (2015). Assessing risk for recidivism in individuals convicted of stalking offenses predictive validity of the guidelines for stalking assessment and management. Criminal Justice and Behavior. doi:10.1177/0093854815610612
- Kropp, P. R., & Cook, A. N. (2014). Intimate partner violence, stalking and femicide. In J. R. Meloy & J. Hoffman (Eds.), International handbook of threat assessment (pp. 179–194). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Kropp, P. R., Hart, S. D., & Lyon, D. R. (2002). Risk assessment of stalkers: Some problems and possible solutions. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 29, 590–616. doi:10.1177/009385402236734
- Kropp, P. R., Hart, S. D., & Lyon, D. R. (2008). Guidelines for stalking assessment and management (SAM). Vancouver, Canada: ProActive Resolutions.
- Kropp, P. R., Hart, S. D., Lyon D. R., & Storey, J. E. (2011). The development and validation of the guidelines for stalking assessment and management. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 29, 302–316. doi:10.1002/bsl.978