Tue, Apr 05, 2022 page3

• Police prepare for new stalking law

  PREVENTABLE DETENTION: As of June, police will be able to classify stalkers by protective orders, which could result in arrest if contravened within two years

  • By Wu Jen-chieh and Kayleigh Madjar / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  Police have identified 2,734 people implicated in stalking or related crimes over the past three years, and stepped up patrols and officer training in preparation for the June enactment of a stalking prevention law.

  After years of debate, the Legislative Yuan in December last year passed the Stalking and Harassment Prevention Act (跟蹤騷擾防制法), which is to go into effect on June 1.

  Earlier in 2019, the National Police Agency instituted a plan to combat stalking, which included compiling monthly data on cases at risk of repeat offense.

  

  A chart shows the eight categories of stalking actions, as defined by the Ministry of the Interior.

  Photo courtesy of the Ministry of the Interior

  The agency said that 2,734 people were implicated in stalking or related crimes between July 2019 and December last year.

  Of those, 1,543 cases (56.4 percent) were classified as sexual harassment, while 619 (22.4 percent) were cases of domestic violence, although those cases after January 2020 were reclassified as a more serious criminal offense under the Domestic Violence Prevention Act (家庭暴力防治法) and therefore are no longer included in the agency’s stalking statistics.

  About 8.7 percent, or 239 people, were implicated over contraventions of criminal law, such as coercion, indecent exposure, assault or offenses against privacy.

  The agency also found 189 cases of workplace discrimination, 76 contraventions of social order — such as stalking “without justifiable reasons,” peeping or other unexplained harassment — and 59 cases of discrimination under educational law.

  Under the new law, stalking is defined as behavior intended to repeatedly exert “anything sexual or gender-related toward a specific person against his/her will, which intimidates such specific person and sufficiently affects his/her daily life or social activities.”

  It also lists eight activities that would constitute stalking.

  Under the new law, police are authorized to issue a protective order if an initial warning is ignored within two years. A perpetrator could then be arrested if the order is contravened, with the option for preventive detention if approved by a court.

  To ease the transition when the new law goes into effect, the agency said it would continue following its 2019 plan, and advise precincts on how to handle cases under current and future laws on an individual basis.

  It also vowed to review incident hotspots and times of day when reports are made, and step up patrols accordingly, while also expanding regular patrols to include known harassers.

  Since there is considerable overlap of domestic violence, social order, harassment and other types of incidents, the agency said it is working to improve officers’ familiarity with the new law and when to apply it.

  For example, in New Taipei City, the number of sexual harassment cases decreased by nearly 10 percent between 2020 and last year, while the number of related criminal offenses such as coercion and obstruction of freedom increased by 11.3 percent, the agency said.

  This shows that officers are gaining a better understanding of the nature of stalking and harassment, it said.

  Officers’ newly instituted ability to issue protective orders and pre-emptively detain perpetrators is also expected to greatly reduce incidents and “fill in the last piece of gendered violence prevention,” it added.

  Additional reporting by Hsu Kuo-chen
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