Violence Risk Assessment in Action: How Do Forensic Psychologists Balance Perpetrator Risk and Victim Vulnerability in Stalking Assessment and Management?

General violence risk assessment instruments such as the HCR-20 have demonstrated utility across forensic populations, but their application to stalking situations contains important gaps. Stalking differs from typical violence in several fundamental ways that demand specialized assessment approaches. First, stalking involves a prolonged pattern of behavior directed at a specific victim rather than discrete violent acts. Second, behaviors that appear innocuous in other contexts, such as gift giving, unexpected workplace visits, and repeated phone calls, are interpreted as threatening in the context of stalking. Third, the relationship between stalker and victim shapes the nature of risk in ways that general instruments may not adequately address.

Research comparing general and stalking-specific tools has found that while instruments like the HCR-20 can predict stalking behavior among forensic patients, stalking-specific risk factors offer added clinical value for tailoring risk management and treatment plans. The forensic psychologist conducting stalking assessments must therefore consider whether general violence risk tools provide a sufficient foundation or whether specialized instruments are necessary to capture the unique dynamics at play.

The Stalking Assessment and Management (SAM) represents the most widely used structured professional judgment tool designed specifically for stalking cases. Developed by Stephen Hart and colleagues after extensive field trials in Sweden and Canada, the SAM provides a systematic framework for assessing and managing risk across three core domains: the nature of stalking behavior, perpetrator risk factors, and victim vulnerability factors. Each domain contains ten individual factors that evaluators rate for current and past presence, as well as relevance to future risk.

The Nature of Stalking domain examines the pattern of offending behavior to determine its seriousness. Factors include communication about and with the victim, approaches and direct contact, intimidation and threats, violence, persistence, escalation, and supervision violations. The Perpetrator Risk Factors domain evaluates the stalker's historical background and psychosocial adjustment, including obsession, irrationality, antisocial lifestyle, relationship problems, distress, substance use, and employment difficulties. The Victim Vulnerability Factors domain considers the victim's circumstances and adjustment, examining inconsistent behavior and attitudes toward the perpetrator, access to resources, living situation, dependents, relationship problems, distress, and substance use.

This tripartite structure reflects the understanding that stalking risk cannot be assessed by examining the perpetrator alone. The victim's situation, which encompasses their psychological resilience, social support, physical safety, and capacity to implement protective measures, directly influences whether stalking behavior will result in serious harm.

After rating all factors, SAM users develop risk scenarios: narrative descriptions of the types of future stalking behavior the perpetrator might commit. These scenarios consider the nature, severity, imminence, frequency, and likelihood of stalking behaviors, as well as worst-case scenarios and unexpected variations.

For each identified risk scenario, evaluators recommend management strategies including monitoring, treatment, supervision, victim safety planning, and case-specific considerations. The evaluator then provides summary risk judgments for case prioritization, rates risk for continued stalking and serious physical harm, assesses the reasonableness of the victim's fear, rates the urgency of action required, and schedules a timeframe for reassessment.

The consideration of victim factors introduces ethical complexities that forensic psychologists must navigate carefully. Clinical experts advise against the clinician assessing the stalker directly contacting the victim, as such contact tends to be experienced by the victim as the professional acting as an agent of the stalker. Similarly, clinicians working with victims should avoid contacting the stalker. Information about victims is typically obtained through victim impact statements, police interview records, and clinical reports when victims have been separately assessed or treated.

The Stalking Risk Profile offers a complementary approach developed by Australian and English clinician-academics who drew on decades of clinical work with stalkers and victims. Unlike most SPJ tools, the SRP structures its assessment differently depending on the stalker's underlying motivation and the risk outcome being assessed. The instrument distinguishes between risk of persistence (continued stalking of the same victim), recurrence with the same victim (resuming stalking after cessation), recurrence with a different victim, and violence.

Research on the SRP has demonstrated that high-risk individuals were more than six times as likely to reoffend against the same victim compared to low-risk individuals, while those judged high risk for stalking a new victim were almost four times as likely to do so. The probability that evaluators would reach similar SRP scores showed acceptable reliability, supporting the tool's utility in clinical settings.

The distinction between same-victim and different-victim recidivism has important implications for risk management. One study of Dutch forensic mental health clients found that over 50% were reported to police for stalking within two years, with 21% stalking a new victim. This data suggests that interventions focused solely on the index-victim relationship may not address the broader pattern of stalking behavior that some perpetrators exhibit.

Understanding the stalker's motivation provides essential context for interpreting risk factors and planning management strategies. The typology developed by Mullen and colleagues identifies five stalker types based on their relationship to the victim and motivations: rejected, intimacy-seeking, incompetent, resentful, and predatory stalkers.

Rejected stalkers commence stalking after the breakdown of an important relationship and may seek reconciliation, revenge, or both. This group presents the highest risk across all dimensions: persistence, psychological damage, and physical violence, particularly when pursuing former intimate partners. Research consistently identifies ex-intimate stalkers as the victim group at greatest risk of assault, with specific risk factors including prior violence, explicit threats, and being employed at the time of stalking.

Intimacy seekers pursue relationships with victims who have engaged their affection, often sustained by erotomanic delusions. While rarely violent, they may persist for years and cause substantial psychological distress, particularly when targeting accessible victims such as healthcare providers or other professionals. Incompetent suitors seek dates or sexual encounters but lack social skills; they typically abandon pursuits quickly but may move on to new victims. Resentful stalkers aim to frighten victims through harassment sustained by feelings of power and control; they frequently issue threats but rarely follow through with violence. Predatory stalkers engage in covert surveillance preparatory to assault, usually sexual in nature.

For intimacy-seeking stalkers who pursue strangers, research has identified prior violence and paranoid ideation as specific risk factors for future violence, while erotomanic delusions are associated with recidivism risk. For rejected ex-partner stalkers, having shared children represents a unique risk factor for continued stalking of the same victim. These differential risk profiles underscore the importance of tailoring assessment to the specific stalker type rather than applying uniform criteria across all cases.

Stalking risk depends on the interaction of interrelated factors over what can be extended periods. This temporal dimension distinguishes stalking assessment from many other forensic evaluations and demands ongoing attention to changes in risk status. The SAM manual recommends reassessment approximately every six months, with shorter intervals for higher-risk cases. This guidance reflects research indicating that stalking situations can shift substantially based on changes in the perpetrator's circumstances, mental state, or access to the victim.

Research examining repeated assessments over time found that time-dependent scores on both general violence and stalking-specific tools were associated with stalking outcomes, highlighting the need to focus on patterns of change in dynamic risk factors. For some factors such as symptoms of major mood or psychotic disorders, change may manifest over days or weeks; for others such as insight, change may unfold over months or years. Effective management requires monitoring these varying rates of change and adjusting interventions accordingly. The forensic psychologist must establish clear criteria for when reassessment is warranted, noting both scheduled intervals and following significant events such as relationship changes, employment loss, or contact with the victim.

The finding that psychological treatment has shown limited protective effect against stalking recidivism in available research presents a sobering challenge for forensic practitioners. While rigorous controlled trials remain scarce, this evidence suggests that treatment alone may be insufficient and must be combined with supervision, monitoring, and victim safety planning as part of comprehensive risk management. 

The assessment and management of stalking requires forensic psychologists to integrate perpetrator-focused evaluation with careful consideration of victim circumstances. Specialized instruments like the SAM and SRP provide structured frameworks for this integration, guiding practitioners through systematic consideration of stalking-specific factors that general violence tools do not capture. The three-domain structure of the SAM—nature of stalking, perpetrator risk, and victim vulnerability—reflects the field's understanding that stalking risk emerges from the interaction between offender characteristics and victim circumstances rather than from either alone.

Effective stalking assessment demands attention to stalker motivation and typology, recognition that different risk factors predict different outcomes, and commitment to ongoing reassessment as circumstances evolve. The connection between assessment and management in the SPJ approach ensures that evaluation directly informs intervention planning, victim safety strategies, and decisions about supervision intensity. 

Training

• Limited-Time Specially Priced Risk Assessment Training Bundle
• Violence Risk Assessment Certificate
• AAFP: Case Law - Criminal Responsibility
• AAFP: Case Law Series: Competence to Stand Trial
• AAFP: Case Law Series: Juvenile Justice
• AAFP: Case Law: Disability & Worker's Compensation
• Legal Issues and Violence Risk
• MDLPA: Landmark Criminal Law and Procedure Cases Involving Persons with Mental Disabilities
• An Introduction to Violence Risk/Threat Assessment: Legal Issues

Blog Posts

• An Introduction to Violence Risk Assessments
• Available Research Indicates: Psychological Treatment May Not Be Protective Against Stalking Recidivism
• Stalking Assessment and Management (SAM)
• What are the Roles and Responsibilities of a Forensic Psychologist?
• Sexually Violent Predator Commitment – What We Know and What Works