Victim’s Perception of Quality of Help and Support by the Police Issuing Warnings Orders in Ex Intimate Partner Stalking Cases in Italy

Stalking among intimate partner is a vicious crime for the police to deal. Several aspects make the police work in intimate partner stalking (IPS) cases demanding for best actions: risk of escalation, reluctance of the victim to report, minimization by the police of impact of stalking, and lack of police skills in non-specialized trained units, increasing risk of secondary victimization. Dedicated types of protective orders (POs) such as warning measures are forms of administrative preventive measures the police can apply in stalking cases. Victims’ perspectives on the efficacy and usefulness of these types of POs and the relationship between their use and the way victims report their experience with the police has been rarely investigated. The current study, conducted with 130 Italian victims of IPS who applied for—and obtained —a police warning measure for the stalker, aimed at looking at the efficacy of such measures and at assessing victims’ perception of police work, based on victims’ perspective and not on the police records on breaching orders. Results indicate that compared with the official police statistics on recidivism rates in stalking cases, the proportion of breaching orders reported by the victims is higher than official data, with over 50% of victims reporting after 1 year they were still stalked. Victims report an overall positive experience with the police and results show a significant relationship between positive experience with the police and perceived efficacy of police work. Results are discussed for purposes of improving training programmes.