Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, how many prosecutions were brought for stalking offences against people previously convicted of stalking in each of the last 30 years for which data is available.

The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 created the offence of harassment and latterly, as amended by the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, stalking. The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 came into effect on 25 November 2012 and introduced two new offences of stalking, by way of Section 2A and Section 4A, into the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not hold any data which shows the number of defendants charged with and prosecuted for offences of stalking or the number of these who were previously convicted of similar offences.

However, management information is held showing the number of offences of stalking in which a prosecution commenced from each year from 2013. The table below shows the number of these offences to the latest available year, 2021.

The figures relate to the number of offences and not the number of individual defendants. It is often the case that an individual defendant is charged with more than one offence against the same complainant. No data are held showing the final outcome or if the charged offence was the substantive charge at finalisation.