Constructing the “Dangerous Dog”: Nonhumans, Criminality, and Hierarchies of Violence

• In Event: Theory and Application in Critical Criminology

Abstract

The individualization of criminality shapes criminal law and criminal justice policy. For example, designations of having antisocial personality, psychopathy, or superpredator status have rationalized selective incapacitation, punitive segregation, and other tools of carceral control. Nonhuman animals are subject to similar processes. In recent years, governments have formulated laws which construct certain dogs as “dangerous” or “vicious.” Although some dog breeds are perceived as inherently “dangerous,” members of all breeds are prone to being defined as such. In this paper, I report on a critical discourse analysis of legislation and ancillary material from five American states in which dogs are labeled as “dangerous” or “vicious.” As with human-perpetrated violence, not all violence and not all violence victims warrant the same level of concern. The analysis permits a view of violence and violator hierarchies that transcend human-nonhuman distinctions. The hierarchies also reproduce the subordination of nonhumans by humans.

Author

• Jeremy Smith, University of Tennessee, Knoxville