Animal Enjoinments and the Social Control of Animal Offenders: Geographic Hot–Cold Spot Evidence of Racial and Income Bias in the Enforcement of Animal Protection Regulations

Abstract

A large body of research examining crimes against animals exists. An overlooked question in that literature is whether animal social control responses contain race, class and ethnicity processing biases against offenders similar to those found in criminal justice outcomes. Addressing that possibility, the current study examined the geographic distribution of civil animal enjoinments employed to suspend an individual's pet ownership rights. SaTScan^© was employed to identify census-tract level hot/cold spots for animal enjoinments. The analysis indicated that hot/cold spots were statistically associated with census-tract race, ethnicity and income characteristics. Thus, while enjoinments may protect some animals from harm, the enjoinment process itself contains evidence of discrimination, suggesting that enjoinments may reflect perceptions of social disorganization rather than the actual distribution of animal crimes.

Plain Language Summary Title

An assessment of racial, class and ethnic bias in the civil enforcement of animal protection regulations

Plain Language Summary

A large body of research examining crimes against animals exists. An overlooked question in that literature is whether animal social control responses are biased, and contain evidence of race, class and ethnicity processing biases against offenders similar to those found in criminal justice outcomes. Addressing that possibility, the current study examined the geographic distribution of civil animal enjoinments employed to suspend an individual's pet ownership rights. This was done by identifying census-level hot and cold spots of over-(hot) and under(cold) enforcement. The software SaTScan © was employed to identify census-tract level hot/cold spots for animal enjoinments. The analysis indicated that hot/cold spots were statistically associated with census-tract race, ethnicity and income characteristics. Thus, while enjoinments may protect some animals from harm, the enjoinment process itself contains evidence of discrimination, suggesting that enjoinments may reflect perceptions of social disorganization rather than the actual distribution of animal crimes.