Profiling Animal Cruelty Offenders, Not Just Violent Offenders

• In Event: Poster Session I

Abstract

Animal cruelty is a type of green crime that is disguised as a gateway offense to more violent offences against humans. Offenders exploit the harm towards this natural and living resource to express or establish one’s power such as in a domestic abuse case. However, many iconic animal cruelty studies commonly examine violent offenders' history to examine animal cruelty. Ultimately, this limits the image of what is animal cruelty, because focusing on violent offenders leaves out other types of offenders and leads to a dark figure of animal cruelty. Using data extracted from an online database of a variety of animal cruelty offenders, this study uses latent class analysis to examine animal cruelty and create a more comprehensive image of an animal cruelty offender. Finding potentially can help local law enforcement understand who commits animal cruelty and effectively arrest those offenders.

Authors

• Leo Joseph Genco, University of South Florida

• Bryanna Hahn Fox, University of South Florida