This innovative and prescient book offers a multidisciplinary framework which reconceptualizes maltreated animals as crime victims. Articulating more active and involved responses to animal maltreatment, Animals as Crime Victims provides guidance to attorneys, law enforcement personnel, veterinarians, and educators by reimagining how animals are positioned within the law.
Lacey Levitt, David B. Rosengard, and Jessica Rubin bring together expert contributors from various fields who argue for reconceptualizing animals as crime victims and examine the legal ramifications of doing so. Chapters explore how recognition as crime victims not only makes animals and their own interests visible within the law but affords them substantive rights. Alongside a proposed legal framework, this incisive book details modern scientific discoveries regarding the complexity of animals' cognition and emotions and the historical and contemporary sociological shifts in our relationships with animals.
Animals as Crime Victims will be a vital read for academics, students, and practitioners whose work focuses on animal maltreatment, animal law, or human-animal studies. Including in-depth examples, practical information, and exploration of substantive law alongside legal theory, this book will be useful to lawyers, law enforcement personnel, criminologists, and veterinary and mental health professionals confronting crimes against animals or the humans committing them.
Contents:
Foreword xi
Douglas E. Beloof, J.D.
Introduction to Animals as Crime Victims: the importance of
framing animals within criminal law and systems 1
Lacey Levitt, David Rosengard, Jessica Rubin
PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO ANIMAL
MALTREATMENT, THE LAW, AND CRIME
VICTIMS’ RIGHTS
1 Defining animal maltreatment: historical and
contemporary perspectives 10
Kathie L. Jenni
2 The legal history of animal protection in the United States 24
David S. Favre
3 The (human) victims’ rights movement in twenty-first
century United States 41
Margaret Garvin
PART II ARGUMENTS UNDERLYING THE
RECLASSIFICATION OF ANIMALS AS
CRIME VICTIMS
4 Advances in understanding cognition in animals 53
Lesley J. Rogers and Gisela Kaplan
5 The evolving role of animals in contemporary society 67
Lacey Levitt
6 The relationship between animal maltreatment and
interpersonal violence 99
Brian J. Holoyda
7 Proposing a nonhuman animal victimology 114
Melanie Flynn
PART III LEGAL ISSUES IN THE
RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF ANIMALS AS
CRIME VICTIMS
8 Applying crime victims’ rights to victims of animal maltreatment 133
David Rosengard
9 Insights from the nation’s first jurisdiction to statutorily
permit court-appointed attorneys for justice in animal
cruelty cases 155
Jessica Rubin
10 Responding to animal cruelty and neglect in court:
A prosecutor’s journey 166
Jake Kamins
11 Assigning animals crime victim status: opposing views
and responses 180
Lora Dunn, Will Lowrey, Sherry Ramsey, David
Rosengard, Lacey Levitt and Jessica Rubin
PART IV RECONCEPTUALIZING ANIMALS AS CRIME
VICTIMS: POLICY AND PRACTICE
12 Mental health professionals recognizing animals as victims 200
Mary Lou Randour
13 Preparing law enforcement to respond to animal victims 216
Virginia M. Maxwell and Cassandra L. Reyes
14 Preparing veterinarians to respond to animal victims:
identifying and documenting physical harm 238
Martha Smith-Blackmore and Sheila Segurson
15 Preparing veterinarians to respond to animal victims:
understanding and treating the behavioral consequences of
maltreatment 255
Sheila Segurson and Martha Smith-Blackmore
16 Could “victimhood” be preventable? Opportunities in
large-scale neglect 269
Gary Patronek
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