Animal Abuse Theory

Animal cruelty has been an unfortunate phenomenon for quite some time. The presence of serial killers among our societies have also been an unfortunate existence as well. Through current studies, researchers have been able to find the connection between serial killers or other violent offenders and it’s correlation to animal cruelty. In the past, the MacDonald triad was viewed as the most reliable avenue for determining who would become a violent offender. Today, more relevant and supported theories have been created. These theories include strain theory, social learning theory, and the graduation hypothesis. Animal cruelty offenders can be categorized into three separate sections. The first includes young children, typically unsupervised,

This theory states that if three particular behaviors are present as a child, this child will likely result in being a serial killer. These there behaviors include wetting the bed past the socially acceptable age, fire setting, and animal cruelty. Animal cruelty may also be the earliest indicator for conduct disorder seeing as how 25% of those with conduct disorder have also had a past history with abusing animals (citation). Animal cruelty now is measured among various scales to determine the severity of the abuse. These scales include the children and animals assessment instrument, boat inventory on animal related experiences, interviews for antisocial behavior, children attitudes and behaviors toward animals, physical and emotional tormenting against animals, and finally the clinical assessment of juvenile animal cruelty

Not only do the animals abused not deserve to be, but these behaviors can also signal very alarming behaviors for humans in the future. An offender can have a multitude of motivations pertaining to the animal abuse. These motivations have been theorized to include: to control the animal, to retaliate against the animal, to satisfy hatred towards a specific breed or animal, to express aggression, enhance aggressiveness, for the shock factor and amusement, retaliate against another person, displaced anger, and nonspecific sadism (citation). If any of these behaviors have been witnessed they should be reported. Family based prevention programs have been shown to be beneficial for these individuals in disrupting their horrendous