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Eleven U.S. states have pending animal abuse registry legislation:
Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and the Columbine High School shooters are among the infamous criminals who had a history of hurting animals before they went on to target humans, a tendency that's part of what's behind a movement to create public online registries of known animal abusers.
New York is among 11 states with animal abuse registry bills pending in their legislatures, following Tennessee, which started its in 2016 along with a growing number of municipalities in recent years, including New York City, and the counties that include Chicago and Tampa, Florida.
"Animal abuse is a bridge crime," said the sponsor of New York's bill, Republican state Sen. Jim Tedisco, who noted that Nikolas Cruz, accused of killing 17 people in the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting on Feb. 14, reportedly also had a history of shooting small animals.
While the main goal of collecting names of convicted animal abusers is to prevent them from being able to adopt or purchase other animals, registry backers say such lists could also be a way to raise red flags about people who may commit other violent crimes ranging from domestic violence to mass shootings. But some animal welfare advocates, mostly notably the ASPCA, question how effective they can really be.
[Ed's Comment - Original link unreliable, so I have added additional links]
Additional Sources:
- http://www.vmdtoday.com/news/animal-abuser-registry-legislation-sought-stalled
- https://www.navs.org/state-animal-abuser-registries-proposed-2018/
- http://www.ladbible.com/news/animals-news-us-states-and-counties-are-registering-animal-abuse-like-sex-offences-20180218
- https://nhes.org/animal-abuser-registries/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cocaine overdose on Monday March 05 2018, @01:19PM (2 children)
If only this was to stop animal abusers from buying another pitbull to neglect. "Animal abuse is a bridge crime," sounds the same as "weed is a gateway drug," or "Cruz ... reportedly also had a history of shooting small animals," so we'll fudge the definitions to overlap as much as we can with gun owners. You wouldn't hurt a small animal would you? No? Well, hunting is still hurting! You're on the list now,
Gevault... I mean John. If nothing else, it seems to be another reactionary bill proposed after a major disaster, that may or may not have holes to exploit later down the road. To the benefit of the sponsor's interests, of course.(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @08:58PM (1 child)
It's actually quite a bit like "marijuana is a gateway drug," except this time it's actually right.
The problem there was that correlation is not causation. It's always been true that marijuana users are also more likely to try hard drugs. So if you only wanted a way to predict who would go on to use hard drugs, looking at marijuana use, especially at a young age, would have been a good way to do it. Less so now, that access is so easy, but if you had a 16 year old using marijuana in the 80s, that would be a meaningful indicator of likely future hard drug use.
But because correlation doesn't mean causation, making access to marijuana harder didn't reduce hard drug use. The people who were going to use hard drugs tried marijuana first, but the marijuana didn't cause the hard drugs - it was just easier to get.
With animal cruelty it's exactly the same, except what we want IS to find the people who are likely go on to commit serious crimes. Just like using marijuana doesn't turn you into a heroin addict, beating a squirrel to death with a rock doesn't turn you into a sociopath. But if you want to find the likely sociopaths, animal cruelty is a VERY strong predictor. Once a child is old enough to understand that animals experience pain, animal cruelty after that age is basically a dead giveaway.
This doesn't mean that all sociopaths become violent. This is where the science and law collide in an awkward way. Sociopaths have no internal checks on their behavior, but that doesn't make them incapable of good behavior - they can still learn to behave according to social expectations, if only so they can make money and not go to jail. Can you trust someone like this with a gun? To adopt a dog or have children? Science says it's a bad risk. Not a guaranteed disaster, just not a good risk. But our legal system and social expectations say you have to give them a chance. Legally speaking, I don't want the government taking away fundamental rights just because an expert says so.
So how do you proceed?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @10:23PM
How do we proceed? Easy.
No registry or any such bullshit.
Continued awareness / common sense when raising and educating kids is the only way forward. Spending money on counselors and probation officers is the only way to help the problem. Don't create a public list of offenders, create a system of support workers to help and keep an eye on convicted persons. The scarlet letter was a bad idea then and it's a bad idea now.