Stalking and Harassment Laws

Assignment
1: details
and list of
concepts
Take Home Paper
Student Details:
4/19/2020

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1. Stalking and Harassment Legislation
In the present day and age, the significance of stalking and harassment legislation is crucial. In
UK, the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 was introduced to bring amendments to Protection
from Harassment Act 1997 in context of stalking offences. This was done through insertion of
sections 2A and 4A. The former section labels stalking as being a criminal offence whilst the
latter deals with stalking causing serious distress or fear of violence (The Suzy Lamplugh Trust,
2020). This act also chalks out the consequences of breach of them, including prison sentence of
up to 10 years. Despite the advent of these clauses, the stalking instances in UK still remain high.
As per a research report published by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, the cases of stalking remained
underreported. This clearly highlights the restricted reach/awareness of these provisions to
public. There is also the issue of absence of exhaustive definition of stalking leading to
ambiguities (Strickland, 2018).
The Protection from Harassment Act, 1997 is legislation in UK offering protection against
harassment in the nation. A breach of it results in both civil and criminal liabilities; and offers
protection against incidents like racial threats, stalking, using dogs to frighten you, and such.
However, from the very start, this legislation has been deeded to be a rushed one filled with
inadequacies requiring its numerous amendments. This legislation also furthers unfounded
accusations particularly when the other person is mistaken or has certain prenotions about
another person (CCPL, 2013).

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2. Psychopath
Psychopath is a very common term in criminal jurisdiction and is often seen as being misused as
well. The term refers to a personality disorder where the behaviour of individual is persistently
antisocial, depicting egotistical traits. Such individuals also are disinhibited, bold and lack the
capacity to show remorse and empathy. However, this very definition of psychopaths has been
widely criticized or being a highly subjective, and poorly conceptualized term particularly by
Hare (Kiehl and Hoffman, 2011). There are even times when a person who is reserved in nature,
and likes to keep to himself is deemed as having an antisocial personality disorder, which is a
common trait in psychopaths (Lindberg, 2019).
Another common problem when it comes to the term psychopath is its use interchangeably with
word sociopath. However, these two terms are very different. A main point of differentiation
between the two is presence of conscience. Sociopaths do have a little voice inside them which
guides them on their conduct being right or wrong; however, this is not the case with
psychopaths. At best, psychopaths can fake that they have a conscience but in view of
psychologists, they simply lack it. Even though the movies have shown both psychopaths and
sociopaths as being violent, it is not always true. Contrary to this, they are deemed to be cold and
calculated killers (Robinson, 2020). It is also believed that psychopaths are born the way they
are, whilst the external factors and environment around a person makes them a sociopath
(Grohol, 2018).

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3. The law and mental disorder
The intersection between law and mental health is a common affair. These two disciplines
transform and inform each other. This is based on clinical manifestations, ethology
understanding, rehabilitation of mental disorders and treatment modalities. These illustrations
have changed the law in terms of treatment of insanity as being a mental disorder, and for
deeming a lunatic as an individual having mental illness (Gopalakrishnan, 2016).
Other examples include diminished or lowered legal capacity of a person owing to mental
disorder. There have been advances in neuroscience that have helped in gaining insights on
complex minds of brain and how it influences a person’s decisions; along with the role played by
different diseases in conduct of a person. Forensic psychiatry has helped in confining criminal
responsibilities (Gopalakrishnan, 2016). This is the reason that law is increasingly relying on
science to help understanding the mental health of a person.
The increasing reliance has however brought certain problems with it. This is because the
addition of terms in legal dictionary like insanity, along with labelling of terms like anti-social
disorder or schizophrenic have provided criminal an alternative defence for their conduct. Even
depression is being used as a defence in criminal cases (Advanced Assessments, 2020). The law
does put in many requirements to establish such a conduct of an accused but the ease of
availability of such avenues have complicated and delayed the final justice to the victims. Thus,
the justice process has been burdened with costs of psychologists as well, along with spending
time in establishing the real truth.

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4. Anti-Social Personality Disorder
The Anti-Social Personality Disorder or APS is a key mental health disorder which affects the
manner in which anything is felt, perceived, thought about or related to another. This disorder is
specifically of challenging nature owing to the features of irresponsible and impulsive behaviour
that often results in criminal activities. An individual who has APS usually is deemed to be
reckless, manipulative and deceitful, along with the total lack of caring for what the other person
feels. Often it has been seen that many individuals with APS indulge in serious crimes and other
law breaking activities (NHS UK, 2018).
There have been many criticisms regarding APS and is often discussed in the controversies
surrounding it. It is also stated that the present classification of this disorder is done in
appropriately and that there is a dire need to revisit the manner in which a person is labelled as
having APS. There is also the question of whether APS has to be classified as dimensions or
categories, along with raising question on use of exactly which personality variables to check the
assessment of APS. The stability and the severity gradation of APS are also a controversial
subject. The key reason for these questions is the unique brain chemistry of every person marked
with complexities in predicting how a person would actually function. Even the treatments of
APS vary from person to person owing to the complexities surrounding brain. There have also
been cases of exposure to misunderstandings and inappropriate management in such cases (Kim
and Tyrer, 2010).

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5. False Memories
False memory is a self-explanatory term that denotes that an individual remembers something
which is not how it actually happened. Further, there are also such cases which have seen a
person having a memory of an event that never even took place. Such memories are often very
vivid and the person dictating them has confidence regarding them being real. Such confidence
and vividness of a memory makes it hard for the person to be convinced that such memory was a
false one. There are a range of factors that cause false memories and these have been uncovered
by the psychologists through controlled experiments. Some of these factors include the
inaccurate perceptions, the interferences, the similarity, the inferences, and the wrong attribution
of familiarity. False memory is helpful in resolving cases for trauma victims, particularly when
these involve cases of childhood sexual abuse. The stress of questioning in such cases could lead
to accepting something that is not true (Shaw, 2016).
The problem with false memories is the role of psychiatrists and therapists. This is particularly
for those cases where the therapists implant a false memory of a crime or an event in mind of a
person, in legal matters. A leading example of this is the case of Ramona v. Superior Court
(Ramona) (1997) No. B111565. Second Dist., Div. One. Aug 19, 1997. This case
saw the two therapists helping Ramona recall about how her father had
sexually abused her. Isabella, one of the therapists in this matter, was
accused of having planted this memory in the girl’s mind. This led to the
therapist being declared negligent towards her client.