# Animal Abuse Registry **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 26, 2010, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-abuse-registry/530490 "2010-02-26T04:58:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2010, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-abuse-registry/530490/1 "2010-02-26T04:58:04Z")
A news story came to my attention a few days ago, and now I no longer have a link. It seems someone in California (Florida?) has a proposed a statewide registry of animal abusers. This make a whole lot of sense. Animal abuse can indicate a serious anti-social attitude. Further at least in some cases it seems to be a crime often repeated. Having a registry would be helpful to law enforcement and to employers. On the other hand, some say that sex-crimes registries have been over-extended and mismanaged. Do we really want to have another set of problems like that? I can see both sides. Any thoughts? ---
**Author:** ![Honesty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f04885/32.png) [@Honesty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honesty)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2010, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-abuse-registry/530490/2 "2010-02-26T07:12:28Z")
> [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](#): > > A news story came to my attention a few days ago, and now I no longer have a link. It seems someone in California (Florida?) has a proposed a statewide registry of animal abusers. > > This make a whole lot of sense. Animal abuse can indicate a serious anti-social attitude. Further at least in some cases it seems to be a crime often repeated. Having a registry would be helpful to law enforcement and to employers. > > On the other hand, some say that sex-crimes registries have been over-extended and mismanaged. Do we really want to have another set of problems like that? > > I can see both sides. Any thoughts? I don’t like registries and would like to narrow them to specifically sex crimes. I believe that once you served your time, you need to get back into society and be productive. Having a "naughty list"coupled with state-sanctioned discrimination impedes that. If I were God-King of America, I’d arm-twist judges to give two sentences. The first sentence would be jail time. The second sentence would be how long your crimes will be available on a public database. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2010, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-abuse-registry/530490/3 "2010-02-26T07:19:06Z")
Just BTW, someone is maintaing an internet data base of animal abuse cases. It will pop up on a Google, but it is not for the faint of heart. ---
**Author:** ![Laudenum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7993a0/32.png) [@Laudenum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laudenum)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-abuse-registry/530490/4 "2010-03-06T23:51:31Z")
I don’t think that animal crimes are important enough to bother going to the expense of operating a registry. ---
**Author:** ![Yodalicious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yodalicious/32/8195_2.png) [@Yodalicious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yodalicious)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-abuse-registry/530490/5 "2010-03-07T01:28:06Z")
It’s probably a good idea. However, this could be a slippery slope into registrations for every crime. Why not have a registration for car thieves, spousal abusers, assault, burglaries, etc? ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2010, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-abuse-registry/530490/6 "2010-03-07T01:39:46Z")
I suppose there are records of every crime, but they are not public. (You cannot easily check to see if a job applicant has a murder conviction.) A registry would be more public. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-abuse-registry/530490/7 "2010-03-09T17:15:14Z")
> [@Laudenum](#): > > I don’t think that animal crimes are important enough to bother going to the expense of operating a registry. This is a pretty good reason to have such a registry – it’s worked to stigmatize other kinds of abuse, and the conviction that animal suffering is unimportant is a sociopathy that goes unchallenged too often; it should be officially combated. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2010, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/animal-abuse-registry/530490/8 "2010-03-18T16:53:11Z")
The New York Times has a story on this today, and I would post a link, but my internet is acting up. The story claims that twenty years ago only a few states had felony animal-protection laws, now only four do not have such laws. Also the article says states are increasingly charging animal abusers financially for the cost of clean-up and care of their animals. ==eta== [link](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/us/18animal.html?scp=1&sq=animal%20abuse&st=cse)