Animal Abuse as a Sentinel for Human Violence: A Critique

Abstract

It has been suggested that acts of violence against human and nonhuman animals share commonalities, and that animal abuse is a sentinel for current or future violence toward people. The popular and professional acceptance of strong connections between types of violence is beginning to be used to justify social work interventions and to influence legal decision making, and so requires greater scrutiny. Examination of the limited pool of empirical data suggests that animal abuse is relatively common among men, with violent offenders having an increased probability of reporting prior animal abuse-with the majority of violent offenders not reporting any animal abuse. Causal explanations for "the link," such as empathy impairment or conduct disorder, suffer from a lack of validating research and, based on research into interhuman violence, the assumption that violence has a predominant, single underlying cause must be questioned. An (over)emphasis on the danger that animal abusers pose to humans serves to assist in achieving a consensus that animal abuse is a serious issue, but potentially at the cost of failing to focus on the most common types of abuse, and the most effective strategies for reducing its occurrence. Nothing in this review and discussion should be taken as minimizing the importance of animals as frequent victims of violence, or the co-occurrence of abuse types in "at-risk" households. However, given the weakness of the underlying data, emphasizing the indiscriminate dangerousness of all animal abusers may have unforeseen and unwanted consequences.Historically it has been suggested that acts of violence against human and nonhuman animals share commonalities, and that animal abuse by children is a

Examining the links between animal abuse and human violence

“…So it is the large number of what some have called "false positives"-those who abuse animals and never progress to violence toward humans-that needs to be reduced. Beyond that, however, some observers worry that early labeling of children who harm animals, based on concerns about them moving on to violence against humans, will lead to stigmatizing those children, thereby creating rather than reducing deviance [38].…”

“…Critics of research supporting "the link" contend that it is methodologically and theoretically flawed in multiple ways [3,11,12,[37][38][39]. Here is a brief summary of methodological difficulties:…”

“…Patterson-Kane and Piper [38] are concerned about the unintended negative consequences that could result if what they consider as distortions of link research are used to label and thus stigmatize children who abuse animals. Such an approach, in their view, "inevitably leads to explanations that emphasize individual pathology" [38: 605].…”

A First Look at Harm Toward Animals by Bahamians in Childhood

“…Patterson-Kane and Piper (2009) caution researchers about making too much of linkages as this may fail to indicate that multiple factors contribute to harmful behaviours. Such problems are not unique to this area of research but also apply to other related areas, such as childhood events and later behaviour (e.g., Maas, Herrenkohl, & Sousa, 2008).…”

Investigating cruelty to animals in private and commercial settings

“…The Links Group UK, The Linkage Project USA and First Strike campaigns by the Scotland SPCA and the Humane Society of the United States). Although many people believe there is a connection between animal and human abuse, among them veterinarians and members of the public (Taylor and Signal, 2006), some researchers criticize a perceived lack of rigorous research to provide evidence of such a link (Beirne, 2004;Patterson-Kane and Piper, 2009). Other researchers argue that the 'graduation' of abuse may not necessarily start with animals and progress to people, but move from 'distant' to 'intimate' victims (Arluke et al, 1999).…”