Citation

Nunes Ferreira David M. J. Forensic Leg. Med. 2018; 58: 199-204.

Affiliation

University of Coimbra, Azinhaga de Santa Comba, Celas, 3000-548, Coimbra, Portugal. Electronic address: marisadavid16@hotmail.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jflm.2018.07.004

PMID

30015222

Abstract

Despite the theme stalking was only being given attention in the final decades of the 20th century, the truth is that this phenomenon has always existed. It consists in a series of persistent harassment behaviour of which one person is the victim of another, there may exist or have existed a relationship between them or they may be unknown to each other. This behaviour may be of the most varied nature and, frequently, if seen in an isolated form, may appear to be simple acts of courtship and demonstrations of affection, which are not taken very seriously by society. One of the first countries that criminalized stalking was the United States of America, more specifically the State of California, in 1990. Several European countries also included stalking in their legal systems, making it independent of other crimes, especially the crime of domestic violence. In Portugal, this behaviour was criminalized in 2015, described in article 154-A of the Criminal Code, under the heading persecution. The aim of this work is to make a juridical analysis of the article 154-A of the Portuguese Criminal Code, to understand if there was truly the need to create a new type of crime for the behaviour of stalking, or if other previously typified legal measures would have been sufficient to protect the victims' interests. This study is also intended to indicate alternative forms of punishment for this phenomenon under the Portuguese jurisdiction.

Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd and Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Interpersonal violence; Neo-criminalization; Persecution; Persistent harassment; Stalking