Big rise in stalking across Wiltshire in last 5 years
Incidents have risen by 1000% in the county
There has been a major rise in the amount of stalking incidents recorded in Wiltshire.
According to new figures from the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), reports of stalking over the past five years has increased by more than 1000%.
In 2015/16, 22 cases of stalking were officially recorded by Wiltshire Police. In 2020/21, this rose to 333.
Coupled with this hike is the fact that these incidents rarely lead to perpetrators facing justice.
In 2020/21, just 8.7% of stalking reports in Wiltshire resulted in someone being charged. This is significantly lower than in 2017/18, when the corresponding figure was 38.3%.
Despite that, Stalking Protection Orders (SPO), which were introduced across the UK in January 2020, have largely not been used.
SPO's were created as a civil rather than criminal means to protect victims.
They allow the police to impose restrictions on suspected stalkers and are supposedly easier to impose than pursuing a criminal conviction, because the burden of proof is lower.
In England though, just 294 orders have been granted since January 2020, despite more than 55,000 stalking incidents being recorded by police in the nine months to December 2020.
12 of these orders have been imposed in Wiltshire.