An Act to make provision for protecting persons from harassment and
similar conduct.
[21st March 1997]
Be it enacted by the Queen?s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the
advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons,
in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the
same, as follows:?
England and Wales
1 Prohibition of harassment (1) A person must not pursue a course of
conduct?
(a) which amounts to harassment of another, and
(b) which he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment of the
other.
(2) For the purposes of this section, the person whose course of
conduct is in question ought to know that it amounts to harassment of
another if a reasonable person in possession of the same information
would think the course of conduct amounted to harassment of the other.
(3) Subsection (1) does not apply to a course of conduct if the person
who pursued it shows?
(a) that it was pursued for the purpose of preventing or detecting
crime,
(b) that it was pursued under any enactment or rule of law or to
comply with any condition or requirement imposed by any person under
any enactment, or
(c) that in the particular circumstances the pursuit of the course of
conduct was reasonable.
2 Offence of harassment (1) A person who pursues a course of conduct
in breach of section 1 is guilty of an offence.
(2) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on
summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six
months, or a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or
both.
(3) In section 24(2) of the [1984 c. 60.] Police and Criminal Evidence
Act 1984 (arrestable offences), after paragraph (m) there is inserted?
?(n) an offence under section 2 of the Protection from Harassment Act
1997 (harassment).?.
