Domestic Violence - Stalking and Homicides

Stalking is not something new. As society has evolved the terms applied to it have evolved as well. We have called it harassment, we have called it an annoyance, and now we refer to it as a domestic violence crime. Is it really? What happened to romance where the male used to "court " and "woe" the female? Is this dead now? Is there no romance?

Stalking is defined in this program as a pattern of repeated and unwanted attention. This leads to harassment and other courses of conduct directed at someone which reasonably causes them fear. California led the nation in coining the term stalking and that state defined a set of behaviors that define this as deviant conduct now prohibited by law. There has been unprecedented interest in stalking since then as antistalking legislation has been passed in every state and the District of Columbia.

There is a relationship between homicide and domestic violence often assumed but not empirically proven. Statistics on homicides in the United States come from Uniform Crime Reports and whatever gets databased by the local police department according to the statutes they have to work with which define what a crime is. Only recently have we really databased and documented relationships between perpetrators and their victims.

In this show we will explore what homicide is. We will discuss how it is defined, how it includes the killing of a human being by an act, or a procurement, or an omission of another human being. While intentionally causing death to another may be homicide it may not necessarily be murder. In this show we will explore the differences between stalking and homicide and the overall association of each to domestic violence.