From risk to harm: why we must act earlier to prevent stalking from escalating into serious violence
As National Stalking Awareness Week comes to a close, the Victims' Commissioner details how stalking can escalate, following her speech at Suzy Lamplugh Trust's conference on the critical link between stalking and "fatal fixation".
National Stalking Awareness Week always forces us to confront an uncomfortable reality. Despite increased awareness and stronger laws, stalking is still too often minimised, misunderstood, or treated as a series of low‑level incidents. In truth, stalking is a powerful predictor of serious harm – including homicide. If we are serious about preventing violence, we must act earlier, respond more consistently, and stop waiting for harm to occur before intervening.
Stalking is not about isolated behaviour. It is a pattern of fixated, obsessive and unwanted conduct that escalates over time. Yet across our systems, responses are still fragmented. We deal with individual reports rather than cumulative risk; incidents rather than trajectories. That gap between what we know and what we do is where harm takes hold.
Stalking as a pathway to serious violence
Decades of research, alongside the lived experiences of victims and survivors, show that stalking follows a well‑established pathway to serious violence. Professor Jane Monckton Smith has identified stalking as one of eight warning stages that often precede homicide. Despite this, it continues to be underestimated across policing, prosecution, health services and the courts.
The scale of the problem is significant and growing. Nationally, police now record around 135,000 stalking offences each year, compared to fewer than 3,000 a decade ago. Even these figures underestimate the true scale of harm. Around one in seven people aged 16 years and over in England and Wales has been a victim of stalking at least once, according to the Office for National Statistics. One in five women and one in eleven men will experience stalking in their lifetime, with many never reporting at all – often because they fear escalation or have lost faith that the system will protect them.
The Suzy Lamplugh Trust’s recent report, Fatal Fixation, reinforces this evidence. It highlights gaps in how stalking‑related deaths are understood, particularly outside a domestic abuse context, and calls for a dedicated stalking‑related death review process. It also draws attention to the links between stalking and suicide, and the urgent need for better mental health responses for victims – including ensuring stalking is explicitly recognised within national health referral pathways.
What the system is telling us
These concerns are not theoretical. In 2024, in my previous role as London Victims’ Commissioner, I published the London Stalking Review, examining how stalking was identified and responded to by the Metropolitan Police Service and the wider criminal justice system. Its findings were stark.
Eight in ten cases reviewed were not initially recorded as stalking. Instead, they were logged as harassment, domestic incidents or even “non-crime”. When stalking is not named, it is not properly risk‑assessed. When it is not risk‑assessed, escalation is missed – even where victims themselves report worsening behaviour.
The Review also found that risk is routinely misunderstood and that vulnerability is too often penalised. Nearly two‑thirds of suspects had previous allegations of other offences, yet intelligence was rarely joined up across cases or boroughs. Most concerning of all, victims identified as vulnerable or with mental health needs were far more likely to have their cases closed with no further action. Stalking is a crime that creates vulnerability. Treating vulnerability as a credibility issue embeds risk rather than reducing it.
Unsurprisingly, many victims disengage. Nearly half of stalking cases end in victim withdrawal, often within the first few weeks. This is not a failure of victims. This is a failure of our justice system. Withdrawal is a rational response to a system that feels slow, inconsistent and unsafe.
These findings echo those of the National Stalking Consortium’s super‑complaint, published in 2024, which identified widespread failures to identify risk early, safeguard victims, investigate effectively and make proper use of Stalking Protection Orders.
From managing incidents to preventing harm
Preventing serious violence means moving beyond managing individual incidents to stopping harm before it escalates. That requires a fundamental shift in approach.
We must identify risk early and consistently. Every stalking report should prompt a stalking‑specific risk assessment, consideration of escalation and a review of previous intelligence – not only in domestic abuse cases, and not only once harm is already visible.
Protection must also be swift and meaningful. Stalking Protection Orders remain significantly underused and are too often delayed. Protection delayed is protection denied.
At the same time, the system must shift away from placing the burden on victims to prove fear or harm. Investigations should focus on suspect behaviour, repeat patterns and known predictors of escalation. This is why I continue to call for reform of stalking legislation, including a clear, standalone offence that better reflects how stalking operates in reality.
Why data and coordination matter
For stalking victims, harm unfolds over time, often across multiple agencies – police, courts, health and support services. Yet information remains fragmented and tied to individual incidents, not to the person experiencing harm. That is why I have long called, including through my amendment to the Victims and Courts Bill, for the introduction of a Victim Unique Identifier: a simple way for agencies to identify, track and contact victims quickly across the justice system. For stalking, where harm is cumulative and patterns matter, this would help prevent escalation being missed and reduce the burden on victims to repeatedly prove their credibility. This proposal was not taken forward by government. I urge them to think again. Without it, the system too easily loses sight of victims at the moment they most need protection.
A moment we must not waste
There are opportunities ahead – through upcoming reviews of stalking legislation, reforms to policing and prosecution, and renewed commitments within the government’s strategy on violence against women and girls. But progress will only happen if we remain ambitious and uncompromising.
Stalking is not inevitable. Escalation is not unpredictable. Serious violence is often preventable. Every missed opportunity to identify risk, every delayed intervention, and every minimised breach is another step along the pathway from risk to harm.
We owe it to victims not simply to manage fear, but to prevent it.