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It has been suggested many times over in recent years that there is a link between those who harm animals and those who harm people. While carrying out research¹ we became sceptical about such claims.

A few years ago, the notion that abused children were likely to become abusers was common. This is no longer accepted as true. In this case the dominant view is that harming animals is directly linked to, or can be treated as part of a cycle leading to, violence towards people. It is suggested that the relationship is clear cut, consistent and predictable. This argument suggests that harming animals can be a predictive variable in indicating future harm to people.


There are serious flaws in this argument. Although there may be some disturbed individuals who are cruel towards both animals and people, extreme cases do not provide the basis for generalised conclusions.

Some links can be demonstrated, but we suggest that the current arguments lead to closed thinking about causes. Problems such as poverty are displaced by more tractable problems such as animal abuse, which are more easily identified as individual pathology. We suggest that the situation is more complex than is admitted by those who argue for links and cycles. There are several problems with the argument.

This issue is laden with historical, moral, cultural and social values. The issue of harming animals is morally complex and culturally ambiguous, but mainstream research treats it as simple. What counts as unacceptable treatment of animals varies between and within societies. Some animals live in our homes, others do not; some are eaten, others are not; some are hunted, others are not. All this indicates that there are few absolutes.

Few studies adequately define what is animal abuse or violence or harm. Does cruelty include pulling the legs off spiders, or only those of vertebrates? Does it matter that one society eats dogs and another keeps them as pets? Richer children may legally kill animals through fox hunting, whereas poorer ones are prosecuted for similar behaviour towards a cat or a dog. In our research many young people and adults (as children themselves) admitted to using straws to blow into frogs until they burst. This rarely appears in official statistics. Does UK society sanction blowing up frogs with straws, or is harming frogs merely less visible than harming dogs?

Research supporting the supposed links is based mainly on extreme and non-representative samples. Accounts suggesting links between those who have harmed animals and later violence towards humans often rely on the same small sample of extreme criminals in the US. Researching a limited population to produce a broadly applicable generalisation is problematic. Any number of life experiences could also be shown to correlate with the behaviour.


A further problem is that much of the research tends to suffer from fallacies of logic. Just because some serial killers have harmed animals, this does not mean that all or even the majority of those who harm animals will become serial killers. Yet this stance is taken in much of the literature.

The psychological approach of most of this research leads to explanations of individual pathology. The socio-economic context of violence to animals is minimised and the fact that most people known to animal protection agencies - and to child protection agencies - are poor is masked.

There are major problems with the coherence of the argument for a close link between harming animals and people, and the nature of the supporting evidence.

Practitioners need to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the problem. We do not know how much cruelty there is, and accurately measuring it is difficult. Harming animals is a largely invisible form of violence and abused animals cannot tell us. During our research, several adults (including social workers) said that, when younger, they had been cruel to animals. These experiences had not apparently adversely affected them. Given the proportion of children and young people who admitted harming animals or knowing others who have harmed animals, this is welcome news.

Social workers should not uncritically accept the arguments that have been put forward about linking animal and human violence. Rather we should consider lessons from other areas of social work.

Heather Piper is a researcher and Steve Myers is a senior lecturer on social work at Manchester Metropolitan University

References

¹ H Piper, M Johnson, S Myers and Pritchard J, Why Do People Harm Animals? The Children's and Young Persons' Perspective, Manchester Metropolitan University and the RSPCA, 2001