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?"

Comments

Sounds Good To Me

[WrongSizeGlass]

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.

Re:Sounds Good To Me

[jedidiah]

Do we get to add the person that raised and killed your dinner on that list?

Re:Sounds Good To Me

[terraformer]

This is where those people want to take this. How much animal abuse is by teenagers with a thing for cats and how many of these convictions are for farmers. How many are serious convictions and how many are you forgot some technicality when constructing the horse shelter? As it stands today, in MA, professional licenses are pulled when you are a felon, on a sex registry (you don't have to be a felon...), under a RO, owe child support, etc. By doing this it allows them to exert control over people who have served their time. These registries are bad news.

Re:Sounds Good To Me

[FooAtWFU]

Maybe, but if so we certainly could also consider adding some of those PETA loonies.

Re:Sounds Good To Me

[zach_the_lizard]

If their punishment is too short, then extend the sentences. If the jails are too crowded, stop sending non-violent people there for the "crime" of ingesting non-state approved substances. Otherwise, stop condemning people to a lifetime of harassment by vigilantes. This goes for sex offenders and for this new animal abuse registry. If none of this persuades you, then perhaps you should consider: a)there are those who are convicted that are innocent (and are exonerated later) b)what makes it onto the registry is determined by politicians and judges, who will add things such as drunk men urinating in public to the sex offender list. Who is to say the same cannot happen for animal abuse?

Re:Sounds Good To Me

[ScrewMaster]

Do you know what it takes to get on the list? Do you understand that some drunk guy can get on because he got drunk, went into an alley and pissed against the wall? Yeah, you merciless son of a bitch -- they nail him for indecent exposure. Right, now he can't get (or loses) any job involving contact with kids or anywhere in a lot of professions.

The only way to control a nation of free men is to turn them into criminals. And that's exactly what is happening. It's not just punishment-lust (although that is most certainly a factor) it's the desire for power. Our Founders tried to codify limits to that power in the highest law of our land. Unfortunately, zealots and sociopaths (and the two are not mutually-exclusive) are doing an end-run around those limits.

Re:Sounds Good To Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you have not paid any attention on how actual farming is implemented recently.

It's not quite the land of sunshine that is painted on the tele.

No, I'm afraid farming today is fairly beyond the concept of humane.

Re:Sounds Good To Me

[Darkness404]

Mod parent up.

Exactly. What we really need to do is stop using jails as "time out" and start only keeping violent people there. If the crime was non-violent and they don't pose a threat to society, put them on probation and make them pay restitution. If there was no one harmed to pay restitution to, how was it a crime in the first place? On the same vain, we need to elect our executive branch by allowing for the direct election, supervision and removal of police officers and make every move they make public record so we can end police brutality and abuse.

What is next? A list of people who bought cigarettes, drinks and porn?

Re:Sounds Good To Me

[VanGarrett]

I have worked with cows and chickens. I grew up on a ranch, worked on a dairy, and occasionally helped out a friend who worked on a chicken ranch. Cattle are not very bright beasts. The calves will drink their mothers' milk until their innards burst, and the adults are content, so long as they know where to find the food. As for chickens... I just cannot feel remorse for any alleged suffering that has been applied to a creature whose behavior does not change, after its head has been removed, leaving only a portion of its brain stem.

In my experience with these creatures, I have not seen any evidence of sentience. They have no ability to behave outside of instinct, and insofar as I can tell, memory is only established through repetition.

These animals are not people. They are food.

Now, I can understand the concept of a "Sex Offenders" registry. Victims of rape or pedophilia experience a lasting and significant impact on their lives, from the events, impacting everything from their feelings of personal security and self-confidence, to even grander things such as sexual orientation (and all of its permutations). The desires that inspired sex offenders to perform the act(s) which got them on the list are generally not the sort of thing that one leaves behind in his life, but rather, something that (s)he must live with, indefinitely. Therefore, keeping a publicly accessible registry of these people is, more or less, a fair thing to do.

Animal abuse, however, is generally not driven by hormones that are persistent through life, but rather, the adolescent hormone cocktail, or general ignorant belligerence. It's really not the sort of thing that needs a registry, because the behavior can be effectively turned off with minimal effort, or may even go away on its own. Normal punitive measures are generally sufficient. To require people involved in this sort of crime to add their names to a public registry is ridiculous.

Re:Sounds Good To Me

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The logic behind "registries", not that I'm a fan of them, is based on the perceived danger of the offender, and likelihood of re-offending(and, in practice, the degree of public revulsion toward that particular crime), not on the seriousness of the crime per se. If seriousness of crime were the criterion, we would have started with a murderer's registry and worked down from there.

Now, I think all of these criminal registries are a bad idea. If somebody is so dangerous that they need to be on a special public list and announce themselves to their neighbors, and never live within a thousand yards of pretty much anything, and so forth, why are they out of jail? If they are not, in fact, that dangerous, how can viciously hounding them for petty political gain possibly do anything but increase their chances of re-offending? You don't want a potential criminal drifting from odd job to odd job, living at a mixture of no fixed address and really shitty parts of town. That's just a recipe for them to do something else in the future. You want them enmeshed in all the cares of a solid citizen with a white picket fence and a mortgage as quickly as possible. Plus, of course, there is the well documented stream of absurd cases, 16/18 couples, yobbish but harmless public urinators, that poor bastard who was wandering around inside his own house without the shades drawn. Just not a good idea. The idea that there are people safe enough to release from jail; but so dangerous that they must be stigmatized forever seems absurdly contradictory; and the consequences of that notion are bad for liberty.

However, that said, I don't think animal abuse cases are any less logical than sex crime cases for the (admittedly bad) idea of a registry. Again, registries are about an individual's dangerousness. This is generally established through some sort of crime, so they end up being based on more or less serious crimes; but the motive is to identify dangerous people(an ordinary criminal record keeps track of crimes). Animal abuse, of the sort that actually makes it to court(which usually implies animal abuse not in the context of some useful production/research activity, or within such a context; but of extraordinary depravity), is not a serious crime compared to sex crimes(since we generally accord animals substantially less moral personhood than we do people, harming them just isn't as serious); but people who harm animals just for giggles are, in fact, generally Bad News. Animals may not experience suffering in any morally salient way; but their pain responses are eminently convincing looking. Anybody who finds those recreational is, indeed, of deeply suspect character(if they also enjoy setting fires, you are in *cough*Macdonald triad*cough* territory).

If anything, animal abusers are probably better subjects for a registry than sex criminals are. In both cases, the crimes are evidence of serious personality and behavioral issues; but the victims of animal abusers are not as morally salient, so it is harder to justify long custodial sentences. Again, I think registries are a bad plan; but I would argue that, if there were a good place to start, it'd be animal abusers. Because such registries inevitably go skiing right down the slippery slope, they would end up containing the poor bastard at the slaughterhouse who managed to make PETA's shit list, some guy who kicked a puppy in a momentary outburst and has felt terrible and done nothing harmful ever since, and a kid who pulled the wings off a couple of mosquitos after a summer of being bitten; but those results are no more absurd than what you get with the present registries.

Or, of course, you could just throw out the crude attempt to classify people based on their crimes, and classify based on psychological evaluation. What you really want is a list of sociopaths, whether they be the blue collar flavor who flip out and kill somebody, or the white collar flavor who can keep their inhumanity in check long enough to make it through business school and do some real damage...

Re:Sounds Good To Me

[FooAtWFU]

If they didn't violate the trust of people who send animals to them, thinking that it'll be good for the animal... I might agree.

Don't give an unwanted animal to PETA. Give them to the Humane Society. They'll try. They spend money on actual animals, instead of just obnoxious advertising campaigns and donations to terrorist groups who firebomb research labs and the like.

Re:Sounds Good To Me

[The_Wilschon]

Or, of course, you could just throw out the crude attempt to classify people based on their crimes, and classify based on psychological evaluation. What you really want is a list of sociopaths, whether they be the blue collar flavor who flip out and kill somebody, or the white collar flavor who can keep their inhumanity in check long enough to make it through business school and do some real damage...

You should read David Brin's book Sundiver. It is set in a society that has this system. His portrayal of it seems reasonable (although "seems reasonable" and "is correct" are two very different beasts, I know), and is definitely not something I want to live in the middle of. I'd vote against this proposal.

Re:Sounds Good To Me

[ChromeAeonium]

Apparently you have not paid any attention on how actual farming is implemented recently.

It's not quite the land of sunshine that is painted on the tele.

No, I'm afraid farming today is fairly beyond the concept of humane.

That's what pisses me off about groups like PETA: sometimes, they're right. There is abuse in farms. A lot. I'm not saying every farm does it, but it happens. When PETA goes out talking about farm cruelty, they might turn some heads, but then they follow that up by stripping naked and saying that eating meat makes you worse than Hitler (but naturally, stuff like this is fine and dandy). And that's where they lose people. People dismiss all their claims.

At the end of the day, their stupid antics only hurt the animals. Do they talk about sustainable fishing? No, they talk about 'sea-kittens.' Do they talk about humane animal testing? No, they want to end all testing (except for PETA VP Mary Beth Sweetland's insulin) in favor of non-existent models and cripple medical science. Do they advocate decent living conditions for farm animals? No, say farm animals completely equivalent to Jews during the Holocaust.

They're not about what's best for the animals, they're on a feel good quest for attention. Well, screw them.

It would be nice for conversation purposes

[SlappyBastard]

I hate to discover only after the fact that someone I'm having a conversation with likes to beat a dead horse.

What about ...

[Bob_Who]

Violent bestiality with a minor?

End run?

[headkase]

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?

Re:End run?

[ScrewMaster]

the real problem is what when 1000's of different "registries" exist?

. I think they already exist, it's just that most of us aren't aware of them, or at least don't have access to their contents (the TSA's "no-fly" list being a prime example.)

History repeats itself

[Opportunist]

For reference, see Les Miserables.

Re:History repeats itself

[wizardforce]

The title means "miserable ones" It's about a guy that was in jail, served his time and had to carry a document identifying him as a former criminal. Then pretty much everyone in society that knew he was a former criminal because of that identification made his life outside of prison a living hell. There is a lot more to it that comes later but that is the gist of the beginning.

there's a new tax too

[wizardforce]

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.

Re:there's a new tax too

[terraformer]

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.

In a state that is bankrupt no less...

This could be quite useful

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Won't Someone Please Think of the Puppies?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That is all.

On the fence on this one, and my stomach hurts

[beadfulthings]

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.

Re:Just another scarlet letter to maintain

[Reziac]

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/