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This Judicial Guide is designed to work in conjunction with federal, state, Tribal, and territorial stalking laws. Judicial officers should consider stalking in all types of legal proceedings, including in Federal courts; Tribal courts; immigration courts; state family, juvenile, civil, and criminal court cases; and administrative law adjudications including immigration and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission adjudications. Judicial officers can use this tool to:

• Help identify the patterns and behaviors of stalking;
• Provide courts the background needed to readily identify stalking patterns and behaviors; and
• Include findings regarding stalking, using model judicial order language, in court orders.

This resource is a descriptive model policy of best practices for the effective law enforcement response to and investigation of stalking. As a complex crime, stalking deserves a comprehensive policy as well as appropriate training for all agency employees. Depending on an agency’s size, organization, and resources, some pieces of this model policy may need to be renamed or combined. Careful consideration is encouraged before removing any pieces of this model policy.

This Guide is for law enforcement officers and agencies regarding their response to stalking. It also provides basic information about the dynamics of stalking, strategies to identify and investigate the crime, and important components of appropriate agency response.

This resource amplifies best practices for handling violations of protective orders, including treating even a single violation as part of a course of conduct, and how to strategically handle such a violation (or violations, as is often the case) during an investigation and subsequent prosecution. It provides an overview of protection orders as well as a primer on enforcing them in cases of complicated jurisdiction, how prosecutors can charge the often co-occurring offense of stalking without running into issues of double jeopardy, and when prosecutors may want to use their discretion to do so.

A fact sheet highlighting how technology can be used to facilitate a stalking course of conduct

A fact sheet (in Spanish) sharing statistics about stalking victimization in the United States

A fact sheet (in Spanish) highlighting the prevalence and impacts of stalking on college campuses

When training on law enforcement response to stalking, a policy helps everyone to understand the roles that others play and how they all fit together, but each role has additional steps that should be part of practice and procedure. This guide is an expansion of SPARC’s Law Enforcement Agency Model Policy that includes additional important pieces that should be included in any training.