Running head: ANIMAL ABUSE AND NEGLECT

Animal abuse and neglect awareness

Jesus Barron
The university of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

ANIMAL ABUSE AND NEGLECT

This paper researches animal abuse and how the recent awareness of this
problem has increased all sorts of types of improvements that have bettered
the status of animals. The use of articles, journals, scholarly articles and
websites is used to obtain the information that is needed to back up the
main idea of the passage the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals (ASPCA), The Humane society of the united states (HSUS). The
information was found in a variety of sources and quotations from people
who have great amount of knowledge about the problem. Websites of
organizations whose focus is on animal abuse where used to see into a
clearer perspective of how these animals are affected. A comparison of how
the amount of awareness that there was back then is compared to the
amount there is today just to see the great difference of how now the
awareness has increased and allot of more research has been done to see
connections between this problem and other problems.

ANIMAL ABUSE AND NEGLECT

Animal abuse and neglect awareness

Introduction
Animal abuse and Neglect on animals has been an issue that had been
ignored for a longtime but it has recently gain allot of awareness. Awareness
of this problem has increased over the past years and therefore improved
the life of the animals. These improvements created many benefits for many
animals and more awareness about the issue. An incredible amount of
organizations that focus on the wellbeing of animals where created to protect
and help these animals live better lifes. Also, laws have been improved and
are still improving to make sure that the animals rights are protected. More
Awareness has improved has helped stop bigger crimes like child abuse and
domestic violence and even murder. The more awareness there is the better
life these animals can have.
To begin with, there are hundreds of organizations that were created to
help animals that have been abused or that need help. One example is The
American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) the first
humane society to establish in North America. According to Mathew
Bershadker the CEO and President of ASPCA he said our focus is to get pets
out of shelters and keep them in homes, while increasing the protections of
animals under the law. So far they have saved thousands of animals and

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rescued lots more from animal shelters and from abusive owners. In 2010
the ASPCA assisted in seven different animal hoarding situations, rescued
over eight hundred cats, dogs, and horses. Another great example is The
Humane society of the united states, they have retired the use of elephants
in circus acts with the Ringling Bros, upheld bans on the retail sale of puppy
mills in Rhode Island, created strict new safety rules in companies that make
pet food, and stopped sea world from expanding its captive orca facility. They
have bettered the life of not just a few but hundreds of animals that where
being abused and neglected. These organizations and dozens more have
created more awareness which helped improve and get more support to put
an end to animal abuse.
In addition, there has been new laws that protect or reinforce the rights
of the animals and these laws have been past in most of the fifty states but
the laws differ from state to state in some they punishments are more harsh
than other. For example, in the state of Colorado according to Stray Pet
Advocacy (2016) a cruelty fine is a minimum of four hundred maximum fine
of five thousand, plus up to four hundred surcharge for animal cruelty
prevention fund. An aggravated cruelty the fine is up to one hundred
thousand, imprisonment of up to 18 months and 90 days mandatory and for
the state of Texas it reads The cruelty fine is of up to four thousand and
imprisonment of up to six months, in case of torture, kill, fighting, etc. fine up
to ten thousand with imprisonment from 180 days to 2 years.

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To Continue, not only has animal abuse awareness reinforced laws and
improved them it has made the punishments harsher and made other
agencies like the FBI and police departments begin to react and they have
also changed some stuff around. Police departments throughout the united
states have taken a step forward and they now train new officers to handle
animal abuse cases. Task forces where created connecting shelters with
prosecutors and law enforcements which created a better system to track
and target animal abuse. The Federal Burial of Investigation(FBI) also made
some changes For the first time since the FBI began collecting crime data in
1930, the FBI uniform crime reporting program will now collect information
on animal cruelty offenses, said Robert J. Shields a special agent from the
FBI Milwaukee Division. This means that finally the FBI will keep record of all
animal abuse cases and will look out for these cases more often than what
they had ever done before in past years. The shocking number of animal
cruelty cases reported is just the tip of the iceberg; most cases are never
reported. Said the Humane society of the united states. There has been lots
of changes and improvements but there needs to be more awareness to put
a stop to this issue.
At the same time, there has been many incidents in which usually
people who committed bigger crimes have had a history of animal abuse. In
an article titled Nationwide campaign: abuse of pets is often linked to other
violence (1999) published by the Atlanta journal and constitution it states

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that there is a definite link between animal abuse and violence of all kinds,
Said Lisa Land of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Her
organization noticed that in the recent school shootings five of the criminals
had abused animals before they went on to shoot at the schools. It was
acknowledged back in 1999 but there was not enough awareness to make it
a big deal so no actions were taken into it. Until recently according to a more
recent article Need for strict laws against Animal abuse (march 28, 2016)
published by New Delhi Times Every survey done by crime squads across
the world shows that animal abuse is directly linked to domestic abuse and
to violent crimes. In January of this year the United states FBI declared that it
has reclassified animal abuse as a Group A felony in its National IncidentBased Reporting System This means that now taking this information into
account it is now a more severe crime than in the previous years. the Abuse
of animals as a method of domestic violence: the need for criminalization
(2014) By the Emory Law Journal is a Journal with research about the link
between animal abuse and domestic violence. One of the results in the
journal is that the research has shown that an abusive household often
contains more than one victim and that an abuser is likely to harm both his
intimate partner and domestic animals in the home (1999) published by the
Atlanta journal and constitution. The awareness of animal abuse can prevent
more sever crimes from happening and improve our security system by
helping to prevent bigger crimes from Happening.

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Conclusion
In Conclusion, the awareness has created improvement and it has
impacted this issue the more awareness there is the bigger the improvement
that there have been made. Organization that are anti-animal abuse have
increased and they are helping lots of animals at the same time to improve
their lifes. The laws that involved with animal abuse and neglect have
improved by making the punishments stricter to minimize the amount of
cases. The awareness of the link of animal abuse and domestic violence
helped identify people that could possible become future criminals. As more
people know about animal abuse and more people take notice of this issue it
improves and has reduced the amount of abused and neglected animals.

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