Dangers of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997

( This Article was published in the Times March 21st 2000 © Neil Addison. It may be reproduced or quoted but the source must be acknowledged )

(Tomorrow 22nd March the Police are holding a conference at Bramshill Police College to discuss stalking. Neil Addison is a speaker at that conference and here expresses his concern as to how the main anti-stalking legislation is being misused)

The Protection from Harassment Act came into force on 16th June 1997 in order to deal with the widely publicised problem of stalking. At that time the government predicted that there would be 200-300 prosecutions a year under it. I always said that was likely to be a gross underestimate and the latest figures show that last year 4000 people were prosecuted under the Act. Stalking, it was said, has now become Britains fastest growing crime and the government are apparently considering bringing in a 'Stalkers Register' for those convicted under the Act.

The problem with these figures is that even though the 1997 Act is usually referred to as 'the Stalking Law' it is not in fact limited to dealing with stalking. As was said by Mr Justice Collins in the Divisional Court case of DPP v Selvanayagam Times 23rd June 1999

''Whatever may have been the purpose behind the Act, its words are clear, and it can cover harassment of any sort''

Cases I am aware of include a young man of 20 convicted for asking a girl at work out on a number of occasions, another person who was a witness against a fraudster was charged with harassing her by 'staring at her Barrister'. The DSS operate an anonymous 'tip off' line for members of the public to report people they suspect of defrauding the DSS but a man who suggested that an employee of the DSS was herself acting fraudulently found himself being convicted of harassment of the employee.

The Act has been dragged into neighbour disputes and most worryingly is being increasingly used as a weapon in husband and wife disputes. A wife left her husband taking their 3 year old daughter and refused to meet with him to discuss reconciliation or access to their daughter. His attempts to see her led to him being convicted of harassment and banned from seeing either his wife or daughter. He has now served a lot of time in prison for breach of that order, he has no other convictions and has never used violence. A man has recently been charged with harassing Police officers guarding Princess Anne, what next ? Ken Livingstone charged with causing harassment to Tony Blair ??

The problem with the act it seems to me is that the criteria in the summary offence under s2 of the Act are far too vague and there is no necessity for the accused to be warned that their behaviour could lead to a criminal conviction. When the act is used by the police as a threat 'if you continue to do this then we will prosecute you' then it works extremely well the problems arise when someone is simply charged without any warning that that is likely to happen. My own view is that harassment as defined in the act should cease to be a criminal offence but should instead provide the basis on which the police could obtain a Magistrates Court order breach of which would be a criminal offence. This is what happens under s810 of the Canadian Criminal Code and would be similar to the philosophy of Anti-social behaviour orders. The law would then still provide the necessary protection to victims of harassment but without giving the unnecessary stigma of a criminal conviction.

Ironically at the same time as section 2 of the act makes it too easy to get a conviction section 4, which deals with the more serious offence of 'Causing a fear of violence', makes it too difficult. This is because the criteria for section 4 requires that individual incidents must cause a fear of violence whilst with most stalking cases it is the totality of a course of conduct which causes fear and not the individual incidents. Therefore in those cases where someone is the victim of a serious, and subtle, stalking campaign the act offers inadequate protection. Section 4 should be changed so that a court can look at the entirety of a course of conduct and consider whether that conduct taken as a whole gave rise to a fear of violence rather than being limited only to looking at a few individual incidents.

The Protection from Harassment Act was an innovative piece of legislation which filled a clear gap in the law. However 2 years on its faults as well as its virtues are clearer. Amended in the way I have suggested it will I believe evolve into a valuable part of the criminal law. However if it is left as it is I believe that there is a clear danger that it could come to be seen as an oppressive piece of legislation which criminalises the merely foolish but fails to deal with the profoundly dangerous.