California To Create Public Animal Abuser Registry 404
An anonymous reader writes "California legislators are moving forward with plans to create a public, online, animal abuser registry identical in function to the public sex offender registry. Is this the slippery slope to further government mandated lists and registries?"
Sounds Good To Me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we get to add the person that raised and killed your dinner on that list?
Just wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
It won't be long before we have public registries of parents whose kids misbehave in school, registries of people who buy pr0n, and registries of people who do anything else the masses of paranoid freak helicopter soccer moms don't like...
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:1, Insightful)
End run? (Score:5, Insightful)
History repeats itself (Score:5, Insightful)
For reference, see Les Miserables.
Re:there's a new tax too (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently they estimate that it will take several hundred thousand dollars to run the registry annually and claim that the number of federal convictions for animal abuse in California is not large enough to levy enough fees on the convicted to fund the registry. In short, they want to levy a tax on pet food to pay for the registry.
In a state that is bankrupt no less...
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:1, Insightful)
Do we get to add the person that raised and killed your dinner on that list?
Maybe you need to understand the difference between farming and abuse.
As long as the animals are treated humanely, it's not abuse, and therefore the farmers are not abusers.
And BTW, I'm a vegetarian.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where those people want to take this. How much animal abuse is by teenagers with a thing for cats and how many of these convictions are for farmers. How many are serious convictions and how many are you forgot some technicality when constructing the horse shelter? As it stands today, in MA, professional licenses are pulled when you are a felon, on a sex registry (you don't have to be a felon...), under a RO, owe child support, etc. By doing this it allows them to exert control over people who have served their time. These registries are bad news.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:2, Insightful)
> There will always be a stigma associated to certain types of crimes. Animal abuse is one of them.
Screw 'stigma', that is outmoded moralist bullshit. The only really important thing to know is how much of a risk the person is to society - even after they've done their time or paid their fine.
Christ, what's next? A "National Nose-Picker Registry"??
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:3, Insightful)
The question is will it be as easy to get on the animal abuser list for things that have nothing to do with harming animals as it is to get on the sex offender list for things that have nothing to do with a sex offense?
Re:End run? (Score:5, Insightful)
the real problem is what when 1000's of different "registries" exist?
. I think they already exist, it's just that most of us aren't aware of them, or at least don't have access to their contents (the TSA's "no-fly" list being a prime example.)
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crime Statisitics (Score:3, Insightful)
In short, this is a terrible idea because taxpayers are going to have to foot the bill for yet another useless project from a bankrupt state.
Re:I support this. (Score:2, Insightful)
But when it comes to animal abuse, I loose some of that rationality. Animal abusers are dangerous and cant be trusted. And I believe it is a behavior that once practiced may never leave a person. They may suppress it for the rest of their lives, but underneath the potential is there to harm people, especially given a one in a million encounter.
Same thing could be said for any number of behaviours. Let me reword your post.
But when it comes to porn watching, I loose some of that rationality. porn watchers are dangerous and cant be trusted. And I believe it is a behavior that once practiced may never leave a person. They may suppress it for the rest of their lives, but underneath the potential is there to have sex with someone, especially given a one in a million encounter.
And hopefully you will see how stupid it sounds.
Sure, let animal abusers serve their time. Even give'em a job. Good luck feeling inner piece when your daughter says she is going camping with him, when his little discresion in life was nailing a cat to a plank of wood while performing some autopsy while it was still alive. Over the course of an hour.
Who cares? Guess what? Everyone has done strange things in their life. Does that mean we get to label those who got caught and classify them as "dangerous"? No, of course not. The entire point of justice is you serve time and you are free and don't have to keep serving it forever. The other way is tyranny.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you know what it takes to get on the list? Do you understand that some drunk guy can get on because he got drunk, went into an alley and pissed against the wall? Yeah, you merciless son of a bitch -- they nail him for indecent exposure. Right, now he can't get (or loses) any job involving contact with kids or anywhere in a lot of professions.
The only way to control a nation of free men is to turn them into criminals. And that's exactly what is happening. It's not just punishment-lust (although that is most certainly a factor) it's the desire for power. Our Founders tried to codify limits to that power in the highest law of our land. Unfortunately, zealots and sociopaths (and the two are not mutually-exclusive) are doing an end-run around those limits.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:1, Insightful)
You really need to stop paying attention to PeTA. Respectable slaughterhouses inflict a minimum of suffering. After all, a suffering animal is more difficult to handle, so it's a better business model to not cause the thousand-pound walking meat sacks to attempt to stampede, or to make the flapping squawking things try to scratch and peck your eyes out.
Re:I support this. (Score:1, Insightful)
You are trying to establish a reverse causality link. It doesn't work like that. How many people that commit an act of "animal abuse" grow up to be serial killers? There is no data on that, but I would imagine it to be pretty small. Obviously, I can't substantiate my claim, but neither can you. So in the end, you are giving no better argument than the "for the children" one that you claim to hate.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. What we really need to do is stop using jails as "time out" and start only keeping violent people there. If the crime was non-violent and they don't pose a threat to society, put them on probation and make them pay restitution. If there was no one harmed to pay restitution to, how was it a crime in the first place? On the same vain, we need to elect our executive branch by allowing for the direct election, supervision and removal of police officers and make every move they make public record so we can end police brutality and abuse.
What is next? A list of people who bought cigarettes, drinks and porn?
Re:Politicians and the public are.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:3, Insightful)
Just to let everyone know, the parent poster (Slashdot#175151) is a known jaywalker. Disregard any attempts he makes at sounding civic-minded. He's a disgrace to society and his mother is ashamed of him. Additionally, a girl thought he was approaching her inappropriately at a party three years ago.
CAPTCHA is 'chilling'
Good (Score:2, Insightful)
They may be 'just animals' to most people, but that's like saying it's 'just cruelty.' There is something inherently wrong with enjoying inflicting pain on a helpless victim. In that sense, it is not different than abusing or molesting a human child. The principles are the same. Blah blah blah about putting animals and humans on the same level. That's just a runaround argument people who don't understand the full scope of the problem use.
People who abuse animals include those who fight dogs- who also run other illegal activities and make money this way, instead of getting an honest job, and getting to inflict their dissatisfaction with the world on an animal that they bred and raised only to kill for sport. Maybe having a public registry won't matter- look at Michael Vick, he's doing as well as he ever has, despite having been responsible for the unnecessarily cruel and violent death of dogs that didn't want to fight. And then people continue to condemn pitbulls as killers, when it's humans that kill them.
The issue is not, at its root, how animals are being treated. The issue is what kind of behaviors we will condone in society. Killing for a purpose- like farming, is utilitarian, necessary for people who eat meat. Vegetarians kill vegetables. Something has to die for something else to live. But killing for pleasure, killing to see the pain and suffering of a victim, is inhumane, it's sick and people who do it should be publicly flogged, not quietly chided. And yes, some workers in meat production plants should also be thrown in jail. Torture isn't necessary in the death of a food animal, and some of those workers do horrific things in addition to a necessary death. People who do these kinds of things aren't functioning members of society and if they lived on my block, I would want to know about it. People treat each other like shit, and that will never change until we start respecting smaller forms of life.
I'm sick of people who wave away responsible citizenship as overkill. Especially in a city where dogs are stolen from backyards to be bait for some worthless piece of crap's blood sport.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:4, Insightful)
Or how about the Ph.d candidate who needs to experiment new medicine on rabbits.
California is California. I hope they can afford this new registry.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think as as society we're at any risk of putting animals at the same level of humans because we have laws against abusing animals (or certain cute ones at least). Nowhere in banning animal cruelty are animals legally raised to the level of humans. It simply recognizes them as sentient creatures that can be harmed. I think that's fair. Using your example of corporations, even if corporations did not have as many rights as they do, you'd still be punished for property crimes against a corporation as you would for such crimes against a person. Because even corporations with limited power can own property.
I disagree with a registry because I don't think we should punish people without having a well thought-out set of rights for the accused and convicted, and a set of punishments that fit crimes, as in our criminal justice system generally (to whatever degree that's true). Registries are abused by prosecutors today and there aren't really effective checks against that.
Re:there's a new tax too (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I support this. (Score:1, Insightful)
If they are dangerous, why were they allowed out of prison in the first place?
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you batshit nuts?
Who said anything about making animals people? These fuckers go on to harm people, so keeping a list of them is not a bad idea.
Also humans are nothing but animals, maybe your sky wizard superstition says otherwise but we are all just mammals. Look around we have folks who murder, who can't keep control of their impulse to eat, screw or anything else. Just like the rest of the animal kingdom.
Re:there's a new tax too (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, all the money ends up going to the flyover states, you know the same fuckers who claim they hate this sort of thing. Put your money where your mouth is then folks, lets see these states give back those ill gotten gains.
So let me get this straight... (Score:3, Insightful)
a state that every American, with any kind of attention span, knows is broke and needs to CUT spending is creating more financially wasteful bureaucracy. California you truly love to live up to your title as the land of fruits and nuts, don't you?
Re:Let's Make A Public Registry... (Score:3, Insightful)
Practical enough, and the very public knowledge of criminal tendencies would leave criminals fewer places to hide.
And if it's one thing we want to make potentially dangerous ex-cons, it's desperate. No one ever does something insanely stupid when they're desperate.
On the fence on this one, and my stomach hurts (Score:5, Insightful)
As somebody who (a) values privacy and finds government's invasion of it abhorrent; but (b) has seen some of the results of chronic animal abuse, I feel a bit like the proverbial Christian Scientist with an appendicitis attack.
From the animal-rescue point of view, the world is full of crazy and vicious people who cruise around "adopting" animals for subsequent abuse. This includes dogfighters looking for bait, people who produce crush films, hoarders, puppy mill operators, crazed cat ladies, people who practice killing and torture rituals, and even idiots who just want a fresh puppy every year or so. Most animal adoptions take place on a sort of honor system, the potential for abuse is huge, the actual amount of abuse going on is both shocking and sickening, and there simply isn't any money for any investigation or follow-up.
From the invasion of privacy standpoint, it should be observed that there are also plenty of animal-loving lunatics abroad in the land. That would be the folks who think that animal abusers should be tortured, castrated, deprived of their children, burned out of their homes, or otherwise "suitably" punished for their misdeeds. People exist who believe that the death penalty as it's administered here is too mild for animal abusers. Such a list in their hands would be downright dangerous.
There must be a way that law enforcement could share information regarding convicted abusers with licensed shelters and rescue groups without making such information readily and publicly available in a one-stop database.
Sigh.
Chelsea King (Score:3, Insightful)
Another list seems relatively pointless.
Chelsea King's murderer was nicely listed. Now an innocent 17 year old girl is dead, having probably spent the last moments of her short life in terror and misery, because she was foolish enough to go for a run.
How, precisely, did the list help her?
Personally, I think the lvl 3 sex offender list should be retitled to the "no legal consequences for murdering the scumbags on this list" list, but that's just me.
Re:Just wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't worry about it, once everyone is on all these lists, they'll no longer be able to single anyone out.
What's the big deal? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand the outcry of privacy advocates here.
All matters of criminal law are matters of public record, as they should be.
Making this information easily searchable is just technology, folks.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just wait... (Score:1, Insightful)
Sadly, this seems to be the way this country is moving. Too many people attempt to attach "scarlet letters" on anyone they deem bad(and I believe animal abusers to be bad people). The problem is that the intentions of this bill is one thing, but the implementation of the bill will be another.
Some idiot law maker or enforcement official will attempt to list a person, or people, who were never supposed to end up on the list and this will end up a catch all for all sorts of criminals. The fact is that, once a person serves their punishment, then they are supposed to be free of any future retribution for that particular violation. Just look at the State I live in(Georgia) and our sex offender registry.
Rather recently, non-sex offenders have ended up on the Sex Offender Registry due a change in the law here and Georgia is not the only state to do this. I applaud the legislature's intentions, but it was ended up causing a lot of extra grief and undue burden on the people who have to maintain that list. Now, many felonies that simply involves a minor(some that are even non-violent) are qualifying people for the sex offender registry. Those people have to check in with local law enforcement when the move in to the area and they have to check-in and maintain the other requirements of those on the sex offender registry.
I foresee this bill, should it become law, having major challenges and being defeated fairly quickly. It also shows the dangerous course the United States is on.
Don't worry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:2, Insightful)
Not really. The guys who raised and killed dinner are purposefully raising animals to die, often with a life of extreme pain and discomfort in between, and often killed in less than humane ways.
Killing of unwanted pets is the most humane action you can do, short of trying to house them all personally, since you are sparing them a life of hunger and hardship on the streets. And cats, depending on where you live, can wreak havoc on the local ecosystem.
Basically, it's a whole other debate. It does not follow logically that the PETA is guilty of cruelty to animals, and instead, must be established separately.
Also, from your link:
The number of pets they kill is drop in the ocean compared to the number of animals raised and killed in inhumane conditions. Perhaps, it's not an attachment to advertising, so much as a focus on a much greater problem?
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:4, Insightful)
Smoking pot and using harder drugs should be legal, victimless crime. Nailing a cat to a tree is not. I have raised animals for food and hunted deer, not a single animal have I ever abused.
Animal abusers are as bad as wife beaters, same cowardly assholes.
Re:Just another scarlet letter to maintain (Score:5, Insightful)
I predict that it will not stop until we are ALL wearing *some* sort of scarlet letter. :(
BTW under other legislation being pushed by this same HSUS-backed crowd, owning more than N-many animals is "abuse" (how well they're cared for is absolutely irrelevant), and breeding pets AT ALL is also "abuse". Best-practices for some types of livestock have already been classed as "abuse". The fact is, such a registry will expand right along with these irrational laws, until everyone who owns a purebred dog is included, everyone who hunts is included, and everyone who farms is included.
And it's all about the money:
Recommended reading:
http://humanewatch.org/index.php/site/comments/the_humanewatch_interview_frank_losey/ [humanewatch.org]
Re:On the fence on this one, and my stomach hurts (Score:1, Insightful)
Seriously though, if you routinely abuse animals on purpose what does that say about you?
If that's you then sorry but the population isn't small enough for your life to hold much value.
Re:I support this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:there's a new tax too (Score:1, Insightful)
Yep, whole freakin state is financially jacked and our so-called lawmakers want to pass another ridiculous law? Unfortunately I'm a long time resident, albeit on my way out, mainly because of this type of stupidity from the politicians in Sacramento. How about improving infrastructure, jobs, etc to get this state productive again. BTW, I'm an animal lover and think anyone that harms an animal deserves to get slapped, but there are other more serious issues that need attention in California.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently you have not paid any attention on how actual farming is implemented recently.
It's not quite the land of sunshine that is painted on the tele.
No, I'm afraid farming today is fairly beyond the concept of humane.
That's what pisses me off about groups like PETA: sometimes, they're right. There is abuse in farms. A lot. I'm not saying every farm does it, but it happens. When PETA goes out talking about farm cruelty, they might turn some heads, but then they follow that up by stripping naked and saying that eating meat makes you worse than Hitler (but naturally, stuff like this [smbc-comics.com] is fine and dandy). And that's where they lose people. People dismiss all their claims.
At the end of the day, their stupid antics only hurt the animals. Do they talk about sustainable fishing? No, they talk about 'sea-kittens.' Do they talk about humane animal testing? No, they want to end all testing (except for PETA VP Mary Beth Sweetland's insulin) in favor of non-existent models and cripple medical science. Do they advocate decent living conditions for farm animals? No, say farm animals completely equivalent to Jews during the Holocaust.
They're not about what's best for the animals, they're on a feel good quest for attention. Well, screw them.
Re:I support this. (Score:3, Insightful)
But when it comes to animal abuse, I loose (sic) some of that rationality.
Exactly. You admit yourself that you are not nearly as rational when it comes to acts of cruelty against animals.
Don't get me wrong - I love animals. Had a number of pets as a kid. But, lists like these ones are an extremely slippery slope and are really just politicians playing against people's fears and/or lack of rationality, or are a way to mask real problems. Lists create an environment for a person to be judged for the rest of their life (because, ya know, everybody ELSE is messed up, but I'm perfect and can judge them) for something that they may have already been punished for.
Additionally, you also say:
Sure, let animal abusers serve their time. Even give'em a job.
The problem is, there will be enough people who will not only not give them a job, but they will also go out of their way to abuse and harm these individuals for something that may have been a brief, stupid adolescent move when they were young. One punishment, and done.
Good luck feeling inner piece when your daughter says she is going camping with him, when his little discresion in life was nailing a cat to a plank of wood while performing some autopsy while it was still alive. Over the course of an hour.
Good grief. Now you're just fear-mongering as well as any politician. Heck, the fact that you can even come up with this might mean that you should be on that list...
Re:I support this. (Score:1, Insightful)
And you have to be quite foolish to think that current registries solve more than they harm.
One registry that treats 16 year old's that pix each other the same as violent offenders? One label that shows no difference between the two?
Why not have a list of people who drink alcohol... where one drunken night gets you on the same list as the ass-clown who just got his 25th-DUI-while-suspended?
Why not have a list of people who are 'racists'... where one word said in anger that's *possibly* racial puts you on the same list with those who have killed for race?
Lists as they stand are a failure, a waste of money and serve no greater good.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:3, Insightful)
People who jump to conclusions based on heresay often go on to harm humans.
Not the same (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't really see the comparison to the sex offender registry.
You can tell your children not to go near the bad mans house, but thats not going to work so well for your cat. (And dogs have to be kept on a leash in public)
A business that works with animals can already check a prospective employees criminal background.
Its not going to prevent people abusing stray or wild animals.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, I agree. I would only point out that you, sir or madam, are an animal. :)
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:2, Insightful)
In my experience with these creatures, I have not seen any evidence of sentience. They have no ability to behave outside of instinct, and insofar as I can tell, memory is only established through repetition.
You do realize that at one time people used to say the same thing about their black slaves right? The white man used to feel that the ignorant savages were "less human" than they were - that they didn't feel pain, and that their response to their family members dying was merely a reflexive reaction!
Descartes was of the opinion that dogs didn't have sentience either and that their screams of pain were merely a reflex action. Read it up.
Human history is full of examples of people trying to justify their actions by claiming vehemently that others can't feel pain the way they do. You're just doing the same thing they did. In your quest to continue doing what you're doing, you're rationalizing your way out of feeling guilty.
Chickens have a central nervous system that makes them capable of feeling pain. It's simple - if they try and run away when you try and hurt them, they're capable of suffering and they value their life as much as you do yours. End of story.
I'm so confident of what I'm saying, that I challenge you to provide me just one piece of scientific evidence which shows that chickens or similar animals feel less pain than we do.
It's not a question of how intelligent they are or how much memory they have. There is just one relevant question here - can they suffer? If they can, then torturing a chicken is as bad as torturing a baby human.
Let me also clarify. I don't value life. I kill mosquitoes all the time and for me, killing a human and killing a mosquito is the same. So under the right circumstances, I would have no problems in snuffing out the life of a baby human either. But I wouldn't torture them. I don't torture mosquitoes either. I just smash them with my hand.
Killing is ok. Torture is not.
Re:Politicians and the public are.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The simplest solution is to stop hunting the mountain lions in California, since they are the primary deer predator. They would have the deer populations in check in just a few years. But that would cut into the profits of the developers who keep destroying natural habitats and insist we kill all the dangerous wildlife (since if you buy your multi-million dollar home on the edge of the wilderness you don't actually want any dangerous wildlife to visit). And all the ranchers who aren't willing to take the time and effort to actually manage and protect their herds would object too.
It is a similar problem with people killing all the rattlesnakes and then complaining about ground squirrel overpopulation and the more significant threat of bubonic plague and hantavirus.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:1, Insightful)
You do realize that at one time people used to say the same thing about their black slaves right?
Yes, and they were wrong and assholes. But this argument holds similar weight to "you do know that Hitler was a vegetarian, right?". It's a sort of guilt-by-association.
I think ultimately we have a clash of value systems here.
It's not a question of how intelligent they are or how much memory they have.
This is simply not true for me.
There is just one relevant question here - can they suffer?
It is a relevant question. It is not the only one.
If they can, then torturing a chicken is as bad as torturing a baby human.
This does not follow, even if I agreed with your previous assertions.
and for me, killing a human and killing a mosquito is the same
I do not share this opinion.
I, and many others, value sentience, and this is why murder seems wrong to me. I'd kill an insect that merely annoyed me without actually harming me. I would not kill a human baby that annoyed me. And human babies can sometimes be VERY annoying, far moreso than houseflys. I think if you really examined it, you'd find that you, too, do not set the same standards for killing of different creatures, and I'm not sure how that could be reconciled with the view that a mosquito life = a human life.
Some sicko... (Score:3, Insightful)
Some sicko tied up a cat's tail to his car and dragged it to death. I'm usually not a violent person but I still feel the urge to beat up that low-life badly, years after it happened.
Re:Crime Statisitics (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope you do not own animals. They are not simply property.
Re:Sounds Good To Me (Score:3, Insightful)
You're dodging the issue, though. They are not unable to find food and water because of their domestication. They are unable to find it because it is not there to be found. The links I provided make it obvious that a certain percentage survive even in relatively harsh environments where they were never meant to live on their own. Nobody is suggesting releasing animals in such environments. There are plenty of places where food and water are plentiful. Release them in the woods near a continuous stream out in the country and most cats should do fine---probably most dogs, too, with the exception of the tiny ones....