Slashdot Mirror
California To Create Public Animal Abuser Registry
An anonymous reader writes "California legislators are moving forward with plans to create a public, online, animal abuser registry identical in function to the public sex offender registry. Is this the slippery slope to further government mandated lists and registries?"
There will always be a stigma associated to certain types of crimes. Animal abuse is one of them. Long after they serve their far too short sentences they will still get to live with what they've done ... and we'll get to share the knowledge of their past with them.
I hate to discover only after the fact that someone I'm having a conversation with likes to beat a dead horse.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
It won't be long before we have public registries of parents whose kids misbehave in school, registries of people who buy pr0n, and registries of people who do anything else the masses of paranoid freak helicopter soccer moms don't like...
Violent bestiality with a minor?
Is this an end-run around the "served your time" part? I thought our theory of law was that once you served your punishment you were a Citizen again (yeah like convicts can't have guns...). So, is this indefinite punishment? And this is coming from someone who thinks animal abusers have serious psychological problems: the real problem is what when 1000's of different "registries" exist?
Shh.
For reference, see Les Miserables.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Apparently they estimate that it will take several hundred thousand dollars to run the registry annually and claim that the number of federal convictions for animal abuse in California is not large enough to levy enough fees on the convicted to fund the registry. In short, they want to levy a tax on pet food to pay for the registry.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I'd like to see you try tell a Liger twice...
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Cruelty to animals, it is said, is often a precursor to graver crimes.
Yeah, right. What orifice was that pulled out of.
It would also be a boon to law enforcement because animal abuse, the bill's authors' say, often escalates to violence against people.
I was once out with a woman who trained dogs. This rather large dog went ape shit towards this woman and child. The owner of the dog talked to the dog and "scolded" it for its behavior. That was it. The trainer said that the owner of the dog was an idiot because one day that dog is going to attack someone and maybe seriously hurt them or kill a child. The owner should have put that dog in a head lock, slammed it into the ground, and let in know by no uncertain terms that its behavior was wrong. I guess preventing deadly attacks by dogs is now illegal.
Abuses covered in the bill would include the malicious and intentional maiming, mutilation, torture, wounding or killing of a living animal.
Good bye pharmaceutical and any other animal based research in California! No more hunting. Oh, and when a heard of deer needs to be thinned out, does that mean they're going to ask the deer to take birth control and leave the state? Will they offer relocation to the deer? Just wanna know.
It would also target pet hoarders...
Good bye private animal rescue centers!
the issue is simple. Do Republican members ... really want to be seen on the side of animal abuse? I don't think they do."
Oh God. I'd rather have someone kick the shit out of their dog than beat the shit out of me.
Sheep farms could background check employees against this type of list.
If someone's puppy goes missing they could use these lists to interview suspects.
And if a dead squirrel is found, detectives might be able to rule out natural causes if an abuser is found.
They should be careful not to take it so far. Many birders could be put at risk merely for taking a picture of a young chick.
Next time they will create a public online registry of slashdotters.
That is all.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Doesn't apply to private animals then?
No, but it does apply to animals' privates...
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
I like to think I am as objective as they come. I am for privacy. I hate "for the children" mentality.
But when it comes to animal abuse, I loose some of that rationality. Animal abusers are dangerous and cant be trusted. And I believe it is a behavior that once practiced may never leave a person. They may suppress it for the rest of their lives, but underneath the potential is there to harm people, especially given a one in a million encounter.
From Wikipedia: "Cruelty to animals is one of the three components of the Macdonald triad, indicators of violent antisocial behavior in children and adolescents. According to the studies used to form this model, cruelty to animals is a common (but not with every case) behavior in children and adolescents who grow up to become serial killers and other violent criminals. It has also been found that animal cruelty in children is frequently committed by children who have witnessed or been victims of abuse themselves. In two separate studies cited by the Humane Society of the United States roughly one-third of families suffering from domestic abuse indicated that at least one child had hurt or killed a pet.[41]".
Sure, let animal abusers serve their time. Even give'em a job. Good luck feeling inner piece when your daughter says she is going camping with him, when his little discresion in life was nailing a cat to a plank of wood while performing some autopsy while it was still alive. Over the course of an hour.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Yes, but have you seen the paranoia over these "sex" offender registries? People are afraid to move into houses because there might be a "sex offender" living on the next block. Never mind that these people don't seem to look at the real picture and look at the trial and see that his only crime was peeing in public and he is now 73 years old and wheelchair bound. The point is, taxpayer funds are being used for this completely stupid project that adds nothing (who the hell cares if someone kicked a dog? I sure as hell don't), adds more debt to an already bankrupt state (next thing you know my federal taxes are going to be "bailing out" financially challenged California) and takes away rights (once you have served time, you should be treated as a full citizen, taking away voting rights for felons is honestly tyranny because they have suffered more harm by the state than anyone else, and even taking away second amendment rights I believe is questionable).
In short, this is a terrible idea because taxpayers are going to have to foot the bill for yet another useless project from a bankrupt state.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
As always, the problem is that the overwhelming majority of people do not think about anything. Nobody stops to think about the other registries we have, or the fact that we are publicly shaming people for less and less serious crimes, or the fact that people who are released from prison are supposed to have the right to put the past behind them.
This is not a system that can last forever, but it is going to get a hell of a lot worse before it falls apart.
Palm trees and 8
This type of thing is starting sound like a witch hunt. Let's shame them in public before we see if they will float... erm weight less than a duck... or was that wood?
My karma is not a Chameleon.
on if they torture it to death to make it taste better. Or cut its throat and let it bleed to death. Or maybe just forced to live in the livestock equivalent of cube farm 24/7.
(I'm making these remarks somewhat tongue-in-cheek... I'm not particularly zealous about animal rights. There's certain ones I like to eat, and I don't feel too horrible about animals food with humane handling while they're alive. But I do think that systemically perpetrated suffering while the animals are alive presents a moral problem, and realize we have a system that, well, presents it.)
Tweet, tweet.
They may be 'just animals' to most people, but that's like saying it's 'just cruelty.' There is something inherently wrong with enjoying inflicting pain on a helpless victim. In that sense, it is not different than abusing or molesting a human child. The principles are the same. Blah blah blah about putting animals and humans on the same level. That's just a runaround argument people who don't understand the full scope of the problem use.
People who abuse animals include those who fight dogs- who also run other illegal activities and make money this way, instead of getting an honest job, and getting to inflict their dissatisfaction with the world on an animal that they bred and raised only to kill for sport. Maybe having a public registry won't matter- look at Michael Vick, he's doing as well as he ever has, despite having been responsible for the unnecessarily cruel and violent death of dogs that didn't want to fight. And then people continue to condemn pitbulls as killers, when it's humans that kill them.
The issue is not, at its root, how animals are being treated. The issue is what kind of behaviors we will condone in society. Killing for a purpose- like farming, is utilitarian, necessary for people who eat meat. Vegetarians kill vegetables. Something has to die for something else to live. But killing for pleasure, killing to see the pain and suffering of a victim, is inhumane, it's sick and people who do it should be publicly flogged, not quietly chided. And yes, some workers in meat production plants should also be thrown in jail. Torture isn't necessary in the death of a food animal, and some of those workers do horrific things in addition to a necessary death. People who do these kinds of things aren't functioning members of society and if they lived on my block, I would want to know about it. People treat each other like shit, and that will never change until we start respecting smaller forms of life.
I'm sick of people who wave away responsible citizenship as overkill. Especially in a city where dogs are stolen from backyards to be bait for some worthless piece of crap's blood sport.
a state that every American, with any kind of attention span, knows is broke and needs to CUT spending is creating more financially wasteful bureaucracy. California you truly love to live up to your title as the land of fruits and nuts, don't you?
Practical enough, and the very public knowledge of criminal tendencies would leave criminals fewer places to hide.
And if it's one thing we want to make potentially dangerous ex-cons, it's desperate. No one ever does something insanely stupid when they're desperate.
As somebody who (a) values privacy and finds government's invasion of it abhorrent; but (b) has seen some of the results of chronic animal abuse, I feel a bit like the proverbial Christian Scientist with an appendicitis attack.
From the animal-rescue point of view, the world is full of crazy and vicious people who cruise around "adopting" animals for subsequent abuse. This includes dogfighters looking for bait, people who produce crush films, hoarders, puppy mill operators, crazed cat ladies, people who practice killing and torture rituals, and even idiots who just want a fresh puppy every year or so. Most animal adoptions take place on a sort of honor system, the potential for abuse is huge, the actual amount of abuse going on is both shocking and sickening, and there simply isn't any money for any investigation or follow-up.
From the invasion of privacy standpoint, it should be observed that there are also plenty of animal-loving lunatics abroad in the land. That would be the folks who think that animal abusers should be tortured, castrated, deprived of their children, burned out of their homes, or otherwise "suitably" punished for their misdeeds. People exist who believe that the death penalty as it's administered here is too mild for animal abusers. Such a list in their hands would be downright dangerous.
There must be a way that law enforcement could share information regarding convicted abusers with licensed shelters and rescue groups without making such information readily and publicly available in a one-stop database.
Sigh.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
Another list seems relatively pointless.
Chelsea King's murderer was nicely listed. Now an innocent 17 year old girl is dead, having probably spent the last moments of her short life in terror and misery, because she was foolish enough to go for a run.
How, precisely, did the list help her?
Personally, I think the lvl 3 sex offender list should be retitled to the "no legal consequences for murdering the scumbags on this list" list, but that's just me.
-Styopa
I don't understand the outcry of privacy advocates here.
All matters of criminal law are matters of public record, as they should be.
Making this information easily searchable is just technology, folks.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
It's just a side effect of our state government being so flush with cash they don't even know how to spend it all! Huzzah!
I predict that it will not stop until we are ALL wearing *some* sort of scarlet letter. :(
BTW under other legislation being pushed by this same HSUS-backed crowd, owning more than N-many animals is "abuse" (how well they're cared for is absolutely irrelevant), and breeding pets AT ALL is also "abuse". Best-practices for some types of livestock have already been classed as "abuse". The fact is, such a registry will expand right along with these irrational laws, until everyone who owns a purebred dog is included, everyone who hunts is included, and everyone who farms is included.
And it's all about the money:
Recommended reading:
http://humanewatch.org/index.php/site/comments/the_humanewatch_interview_frank_losey/
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
no. the beginning of the slippery slope was the introduction of sex-offender registers. as has been amply proven by this new register.
I don't really see the comparison to the sex offender registry.
You can tell your children not to go near the bad mans house, but thats not going to work so well for your cat. (And dogs have to be kept on a leash in public)
A business that works with animals can already check a prospective employees criminal background.
Its not going to prevent people abusing stray or wild animals.
Some sicko tied up a cat's tail to his car and dragged it to death. I'm usually not a violent person but I still feel the urge to beat up that low-life badly, years after it happened.
I hope you do not own animals. They are not simply property.