Recently I heard of some cases where harsh punishment was inflicted upon dogs and cats. Explosives up the posterior, etc… I also heard that there is a large amount of people, some of them legislators, that want to make animal cruelty a felony. Currently it’s a small misdemeanor. While I agree that the mistreatment of dogs is wrong(unfortunately I don’t care about cats), it seems to me that making it a felonyis a little bit of overkill. An awful lot of things are taken away from you if you’re convicted of a felony. A lot of civil rights, the right to vote, own a gun, etc. are gone if you’re convicted, not to mention that employers are reluctant to hire ex-cons. I just think it should be a serious misdemeanor, because it seems that you are thought of as a lower human being if you’re a convicted felon.
I’m not so sure I’d like the idea of someone who equates “torture” with “fun” owning a gun…but then I am a Tree-Hugging Gay-Rights-Supporting Destined-For-Hell-Pagan Bleeding-Heart Liberal™, after all. So I suppose it’s only in line with my stereotype. (Not a slam at you, Mick, as I don’t know you or your thoughts about us THGRSDFHPBHLs. Just an admission of my own unapologetic bias.)
There’s evidence to suggest that people who are into being nasty to non-human living things are more likely to be nasty to human living things. I couldn’t tell you a cite off the top of my head, but I’d suggest checking aspca.org or hsus.org.
Of course, cruelty-to-animals as indicator of cruelty-to-human tendencies might suggest heavy-duty counseling rather than heavy-duty punishment…but my personal liberal heart bleeds more for the animals.
I think you’re missing the point. It won’t be that all instances of animal cruelty will always be felonies. It will give prosecutors a more severe charge to use if the situation warrants it. If, for some reason, I were to leave my dog outside on a cold winter night and he died of exposure, I can’t imagine being charged with a felony (of course, I also can’t imagine leaving him out all night at all, even on a pleasant summer night). If, on the other hand, a neighbor were to kidnap one of my cats from my porch and then skin it alive while videotaping the event so he could pass it off as ar…(oops, wrong thread), that might warrant consideration as a felony, since he trespassed upon my property, illegally acquiring the animal expressly for the purpose of doing harm to it. That would deserve a felony charge, IMO.
I hope you can see why giving the prosecuting authority the option of using a felony charge could be a good thing. Of course, just how good such a law would be would depend heavily on how well the legislation itself is written.
Why would you think animal cruelty shouldn’t be a felony? I’m not extremist lunatic, but I think when someone deliberately does something to hurt an animal, they should be punished. Severe harm should bring severe punishment. Counseling should also be mandatory, not that I think it would do much good in most cases.
I also think that abandoning an animal should bring a fairly severe punishment. It’s not like you can’t take unwanted animals to the pound or the SPCA or HSUS. At least there they have a chance of being adopted, or else are humanely put to sleep, unlike the abandoned ones, who starve, are mistreated, hit by cars or left vulnerable to the sort of person who would pick them up just to torture and kill them.
This is a bad day for me to be discussing this, I’m afraid. Someone abandoned a shepherd-mix on a road that I take to work. I tried to rescue it, but it was too scared to come to anyone. Several people have tried, but it would not leave the area it was dropped in, so people just left it food so it would not starve. On my way in to work today, I saw her dead on the side of the road, hit by a car. I can hardly type this without crying. So forgive me if I sound emotional about this. I am.
Seems to me that animal cruelty is a more serious offense than some current felonies (drug posession, for example).
So yeah, a felony charge should at least be an option.
Animal cruelty was made a felonly in Texas within the last 3-4 months. I know, because I realized that I couldn’t kill Ophelia (the demon, bitch cat in heat) that I was sitting. The decision to make cruelty to animals a felony stemmed from 2 cases. The first is where student athletes at Baylor were catching and skinning cats. The second case was some teens who intentionally blinded a puppy. These sick fu@#s need to know that our culture does not tolerate this sort of behaviour.
Felony charges should be an option for some of the cruel things people will do to an animal. There is legislation pending in Colorado to that effect, and I think Minnesota (?) just made it a felony. Good, I say. I hope every state follows suit.
Great idea. Then they can throw the 7-year-old from down the block into the slammer for 20 years for frying ants with a magnifying glass. That’ll teach him…
It’s pathetic that we have to legislate what should simply be considered being a decent human being, but the common sense system seems to be failing us. Another thing to consider is that severe animal cruelty is often a first step toward more severe and grievous crimes*. Identifying these individuals early is a good idea IMHO.
Of course, as has been pointed out, the law needs to be applied with common sense. You don’t get the chair for accidentally vacuuming up the family’s pet hamster who got loose the night before.
Troubleagain wrote:
>>I also think that abandoning an animal should bring a fairly severe punishment<<
I absolutely agree. It makes me sick to see, so often, dogs wandering helplessly on the highway, unless they’re lying dead, being struck. One time I saw a poor dog tied to a bush, alone. The owner, obviously, had no more use for it, and this bush was more convenient than the nearest animal shelter. Too many people think that animals are toys: they need little or no maintainence and are easily disposable. People who discard living things in such ways should be punished, and severely. It makes no difference to me if they lose the right to vote, etc. Tough! I know someone who has a history of getting her children animals for pets and then discarding them this way and that way and locking them away in the cold, dark basement when they are bored of them(usually after a few weeks), when the novelty as worn off, so I am a bit sensitive about this issue.
And as for those who purposefully hurt animals, as the OP mentioned one example, “explosives up the posterior,” etc. so what if they are convicted as felons? What do you gain out of torturing another living thing in such ways? True animals are lower life forms from us. We may debate whether or not we should use them as instruments of labor or for food, but deliberate injury for the mere sake of satisfying some person’s sadism is beyond debate. Even if one is perfectly well-grounded in every other aspect of life, this sort of behavior should be dealt with properly.
**Moderator’s Notes:**I’m moving this to Great Debates. The Mick, this makes two of your topics I’ve moved there in two days. May I politely suggest you re-read the forum descriptions on the front page of the message board? You’ll find it here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/index.php If, after reviewing those little blurbs you find yourself still unsure of the appropriate types of threads for a forum, please e-mail me and I’ll attempt to make it more clear. Thank you.
Personally, I like the idea that a potential employer might not hire a convicted animal-torturer. I think an employer might want to know if you’ve done something to harm an innocent animal. Then again, some might not care.
…and this is troublesome how? I don’t see how this punishment of heinous and sadistic behavior is “overkill.” The deliberate torture of animals is nothing short of reprehensible, and must be dealt with as such. Even the stiffest sentences on misdemeanors don’t come close to being appropriate for, say, the high-school graduates who took a beloved donkey on a public farm out of his pen, tied him to a tree, and then beat & strangled him to death.
This notion that cruelty to animals leads to cruelty to humans is justification for making cruelty to animals a felony is preposterous. There may be valid indications that cruelty to animals leads to cruelty to humans, but the rationale that that is sufficient justification is ludicrous. Check your phylogeny–humans are animals. The issue at hand is the wanton abuse and/or destruction of life.
I’m not a Tree-Hugging Gay-Rights-Supporting Destined-For-Hell-Pagan Bleeding-Heart Liberal™ like Ferggie, but I can’t see how one can assert that the life of a cat, insect or tree is more valuable than a human life. Survival instinct dictates that I value my life more than the cat, insect, tree or another humans when situation demands the choice between my life and another. Pertaining to taking a life for wantonly, I’d as soon kill a person as I would a cat.
Is it a felony to kill a human? Yes. Are humans animals? Yes. One can’t logically take the step from the specific to the general without committing a fallacy, but I think it should be a felony to take any life wantonly. Mick, if someone is so disturbed that they’d kill an animal for fun, I don’t want them to have a voice in government, i.e., vote. I don’t want them to own a gun–why should they be issued a tool of violence when they have already exhibited violent behavior resulting in death. I don’t want them to have any luck getting a job because I don’t want to associate with someone that twisted.
If someone has so little regard for the lives of others, human or otherwise, they should be kept from endangering those lives by isolating the twisted fuck from them, e.g., imprisonment.
I really don’t see why animal cruelty is a crime at all. The only arguments against it that people have given in this thread are that it offends their sensibilities, and it is an indicator for violent behavior. If offending other peoples’ sensibilities is sufficient to be charged with a crime, shouldn’t homosexuality be illegal? And if something being an indicator for violence means that it should be illegal, shouldn’t we lock up victims of child abuse, since they are more likely to be violent?
I have no problem in principle with making animal torture a felony. However, making the more generic “animal cruelty” a felony is more problematic. I can see such statutes being used by animal rights activists against farmers to combat animal-raising techniques which are commonly used but which the activists may find appalling. Should Farmer Brown be declared a felon because he doesn’t air-condition his hen house? Or because he shot a stray dog?
These statutes, if they’re going to be enacted, need to be carefully drawn so as not to cast too wide a net. I would probably make animal neglect, or negligent infliction of harm a misdemeanor. Only the intentional torture of animals should be a felony. Even then, I can imagine that the statute might be mis-used. I can imagine some activists seeking prosecution of hunters for animal torture.
If you do not understand the difference between a person who has committed an act of violence and a person who has been a victim of violence, you may want to recuse yourself from the discussion and put a moist towel on your head.
spoke, most cruelty and animal welfare laws today, as I understand them, are written specifically not to apply to animals intended to be eaten or otherwise exploited (like for fur or skin). I think it would be a question of tightening the potential penalties for those acts towards animals that are already criminal, rather than broadening the reach of the existing laws.