Stalking Risk Profile (SRP)

The Stalking Risk Profile (SRP) is a structured professional judgment instrument that guides risk assessment in stalking situations. Stalking—a pattern of targeted, repeated, and unwanted intrusive acts—can cause significant harm to victims, particularly when it is persistent or involves physical violence. The SRP provides a structure for assessing the likelihood of these outcomes by evaluating the presence of risk factors linked to each. Judgments made using the SRP can help professionals to more effectively allocate resources to manage stalking situations. This article describes the development of the SRP, outlines its use, describes its structure, and reviews the empirical evidence for the reliability and validity of the SRP.

Development of the SRP

The SRP was developed by a team of Australian and English clinician academics, drawing on their research, which began in the early 1990s, into the understanding and treatment of stalkers and their victims. The content of the SRP was also heavily influenced by the authors’ clinical work with stalkers and victims in forensic, mental health, and policing settings and broader research into violence risk assessment.

The SRP was first presented in a 2006 article as a set of brief guidelines designed to help professionals consider risk factors that may be relevant in a specific stalking case. The guidelines emphasized that when assessing stalking risks, it was important to consider both the nature of the prior relationship between the stalker and victim and the stalker’s apparent motivation. Drawing on the nascent stalking risk assessment literature and the authors’ clinical practice, the article highlighted the importance of understanding the stalker’s history of similar behavior toward the same victim or others, the nature and pattern of stalking behaviors in the current stalking episode, and the role of clinical factors, including stalker psychopathology and personality. Situational factors and victim vulnerabilities that may exacerbate risk of contin ued stalking, physical violence toward the victim, or other negative outcomes were also canvassed. These brief guidelines were elaborated on and developed into a full, structured professional judgment instrument that was published in 2009.

Using the SRP

The SRP is a 100-page manual available in English, Dutch, and German. It guides the user through the process of assessing risk factors associated with different types of stalking risk and developing management plans for stalkers. It includes a specific section highlighting additional areas for consideration when assessing risks to stalking victims who are public figures (e.g., politicians or celebrities).

The SRP is intended for use with individuals aged 18 years and older where there is evidence of current or past stalking behavior. The SRP is specific to a particular stalking case, with a separate risk assessment completed for each unique stalker–victim pair. Mental health professionals are the primary intended users, although professionals including law enforcement are able to apply the SRP with formal training and diagnostic support from a mental health clinician. Users are required to be familiar with conducting interview-based assessments and with their local anti-stalking legislation. A 2-day training workshop is required for those unfamiliar with structured professional judgment risk assessment or stalking.

Structure of the SRP

The SRP differs from other structured professional judgment tools in that the risk factors assessed in a specific case depend on both the risk outcome being assessed and the stalker’s underlying motivation. This structure was based on research indicating that risk factors were differentially related to stalking outcomes. For example, threats are associated with physical violence in a stalking episode but are unrelated to stalking duration, while psychotic symptoms have the opposite relationship, being unrelated to stalking violence but strongly predictive of duration. The authors also observed that risk factors that were highly relevant in some stalking situations were simply irrelevant to others. For example, where the stalker is a rejected former intimate, sharing children or property with the victim is a risk factor for continued stalking. This risk factor simply does not apply when the stalker and victim had no prior relationship. The SRP therefore uses the type of risk and the apparent motivation of the stalker to cluster risk factors into distinct sets, each of which results in a separate risk judgment.

Domains of Stalking Risk

The SRP can assess six areas of stalking-related risk. Two relate to the potential for future stalking behavior, one to the potential for physical violence toward the current victim, one to the stalker’s level of psychosocial need, and two are specific to public figure stalking situations. Each is defined further below. Administration of the SRP will usually result in risk judgments in three domains, five if victim is a public figure.

• Persistence is the likelihood that a person will continue to stalk this victim. Persistence is assessed when there is evidence that the stalker has intruded upon this victim within the previous 6 months.
• Violence is the likelihood that a person who is currently stalking will engage in physical violence toward the stalking victim or people associated with the victim. Violence is specifically defined as physical contact intended to coerce or harm.
• Recurrence is the likelihood that a person who has stopped stalking will resume. The Recurrence domain is scored only if the stalker has not intruded upon the victim for a period of 6 months, despite being at liberty to do so. Two Recurrence judgments are made: one regarding future stalking of the same victim as in the previous episode (Recurrence_same) and the other relating to future stalking of a different victim (Recurrence_different).
• Psychosocial Damage to the Stalker is the likelihood that the stalker will experience significant psychological and social harm due to his or her behavior and situation. High levels of psychosocial need increase risk in other domains and may present challenges for engaging the stalker in offense-related treatment.
• Escalation is the likelihood that stalking of a public figure will escalate from communication to attempting to approach the victim. This domain helps agencies responsible for public figure protection to allocate resources to cases posing the greatest physical threat.
• Disruption is the likelihood that stalking of a public figure will involve significant disruption, distress, and/or embarrassment. This domain helps security agencies identify cases that may involve significant disruption to the target’s activities and so require management, even if other domains of risk are low.

Stalker Motivational Types

Assessment of the stalker’s motivation is integral to the structure of the SRP as it partially determines the risk factors that are assessed. The SRP classifies motivations using the typology developed by leading stalking researchers Paul Mullen, Michele Pathé, and Rosemary Purcell. The prior stalker–victim relationship, the stalker’s apparent initial motivation for seeking unwelcome contact with the victim, and the presence and nature of psychopathology are used to classify a stalking episode into one of five types.

• Rejected stalkers begin after the breakdown of a close relationship. Former sexual intimates belong to this type, but it may also include others in close relationships such as family members or friends. Rejected stalkers are motivated by a desire for reconciliation, revenge, or both and are not typically afflicted by severe mental illness.
• Resentful stalkers target strangers or acquaintances who they believe have wronged them in some way. Resentful stalkers seek revenge against their victims as a way to regain a sense of power and control and frequently present with paranoid personality traits or frank psychoses that contribute to their sense of injustice.
• Intimacy Seekers stalk acquaintances or strangers with whom they falsely believe they have a loving relationship, often due to a severe mental illness. The stalking is often driven by a (potentially delusional) conviction that either the victim loves them in return or inevitably will love them if they only persist.
• Incompetent Suitors are seeking to establish friendships or dating relationships with strangers or acquaintances. Motivated by loneliness or lust, their approaches are unsophisticated and intrusive. Incompetent Suitors are not necessarily affected by mental illness, but they often exhibit impaired social skills or interpersonal deficits.
• Predatory stalkers target strangers or acquaintances to obtain sexual gratification, which is often deviant in nature. Predatory stalkers do not usually suffer from serious mental illness, although diagnoses of paraphilia, substance abuse, personality disorder, and depression are common.

Judgments about motivational type for the SRP are facilitated using a decision tree. Once the user has determined the type of stalker, the choice of risk factors to assess in each risk domain is restricted to those relevant to that type.

Risk Factors and Risk Judgments

Depending on type of stalker and the domains of risk to be assessed, administration of the SRP involves rating between 32 and 40 risk factors. Each is rated as present (Y), possibly or partially present (?), or absent (N). When all risk factors in a domain have been rated, the assessor makes a risk judgment of low, moderate, or high risk for that domain. Risk judgments are a clinical decision made by the assessor but are guided by the number and nature of risk factors that are present in that domain. Like other structured professional judgment instruments, the risk judgment categories are tied to the anticipated level of resourcing and intervention required to prevent an adverse outcome. Risk judgments are valid for approximately 6 months from the time of assessment and, with the exception of Recurrence_different judgments, are specific to risks to the victim of the current stalking episode.

Reliability and Validity of the SRP

The SRP has been evaluated in a single study of the English manual conducted by the authors of the instrument. The SRP was administered in 256 Australian stalking cases (93% male), with law enforcement charges for stalking and related offenses used to measure recidivism over an aver age follow-up time of 4.3 years. Interrater reliability of decisions about stalker type was excellent (κ = .98). The interrater reliability of risk judgments was moderate to substantial, with intraclass correlations (one-way, random effects model, single ratings, absolute agreement method) ranging from .70 for Recurrence_same judgments to .90 for Persistence judgments. Risk judgments for Persistence and Recurrence were able to discriminate between stalkers who did and did not engage in further stalking. There was a 66–68% probability that a randomly selected reoffender would have a higher risk judgment on the SRP than a randomly selected nonreoffender. Those judged to present a high risk of future stalking of the same victim (either Persistence or Recurrence_same) were more than 6 times as likely to reoffend against the victim as those judged to present a low risk. Those judged to present a high risk of Recurrence_different were almost 4 times as likely to reoffend by stalking a new victim as those judged low risk. The validity of violence risk judgments was not reported in this study due to low rates of violent reoffending. The authors concluded that the results indicated that the SRP shows promise in clinical

References:

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