What cases of stalking are brought before criminal tribunals? A comparison of judgments applying art. 172 ter of the Criminal Code with prevalence data
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5944/rdpc.27.2022.30679Keywords:
stalking, sentencias, Audiencias Provinciales, stalker.Abstract
Stalking was included in our Criminal Code by the LO 1/2015, 30 March 2015. This offence punishes a series of heterogeneous conducts that, due to their repetition, are likely to disrupt the lives of third persons. The aim of this research is to analyse whether the aforementioned offence (art. 172 ter CP) provides an adequate response to this phenomenon. To this end, all the stalking judgments issued by the provincial Courts included in
the CENDOJ database from 1 January 2016 to 31 July 2020 (N = 236) were
analysed. According to the results obtained, in 90.7% of the cases the stalker is a man, but the victim is a woman in 86% of the judgments. In most of the decisions (67.8%) there was also a previous romantic relationship between both. The average duration of the predatory behaviour in the cases that reach the courts is about 6 months and 28% of them are cyberstalking cases. Finally, among the main results, it was found that convictions for this crime do not reach 45% of the total number of judgments handed down by the Provincial Courts. After comparing the results obtained here with the data on prevalence, it can be concluded that the cases of stalking handled by the Spanish criminal courts do not coincide with the phenomenon.
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