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An Examination of Community-Level Correlates of Animal Welfare Offenses and Violent Crime in Finland

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Abstract

There is very little research that provides a truly sociological assessment of the structural correlates of animal crime. There is also no comparative, community-level research on animal crimes in countries other than the U.S. In this exploratory study, we examine correlates of animal crime across Finland. Taking advantage of Finnish data on reported animal crime for 294 municipalities over a 10-year period, we (1) compare community-level predictors of violent and animal crime and (2) examine whether there is a relationship between violent crime and animal crime. While several economic, structural, and cultural variables are related to violent crime, we find that poverty is a common correlate of both violent and animal crime in Finland. We also find that, in contrast to the U.S., violent crime and animal crime are not related in Finland at the community level. We discuss implications for future research and the ways animal crime differs in the U.S. and Finland.

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Notes

  1. We examined how our results differed by using rates per 1000 households and per 1000 pet-owning households, based on estimates of the number of pet-owning households across major regions in Finland. Because the number of households, pet-owning households, and persons are highly correlated, our results are very similar for each of the measures, thus we present the results of analyses using rates per 1000 persons for direct comparability with violent crime.

  2. Because there were many municipalities without any reports of animal crime, we also estimated the animal crime equations using procedures for count variables (e.g., Poisson regression). The results were very similar to those we present that allow for direct comparison of effects of predictors of both types of crime, in the same metric.

  3. Because the number of animal crimes are substantially lower than violent crimes, they are rescaled per 10,000 for visual clarity.

  4. Property crime was also unrelated to animal crime.

  5. When we re-estimated the series of equations omitting municipalities from the Ostrobothnia district, there were no substantive differences in comparison with the results we present.

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Funding

No funding was received to assist with the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, USA

    Keri B. Burchfield & Fred E. Markowitz

  2. University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

    Tarja Koskela

Authors
  1. Keri B. Burchfield
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  2. Fred E. Markowitz
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  3. Tarja Koskela
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Contributions

The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: FEM and TK; data collection: FEM; analysis and interpretation of results: FEM and KBB; draft manuscript preparation: KBB, FEM, and TK. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Keri B. Burchfield.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Data Availability

Upon request.

Code Availability

Upon request.

Ethical Approval

This study involved the analysis of data available to the public that are not individually identifiable; therefore human subjects review was required.

Appendices

Appendix

Appendix 1: Matrix of Correlations

Variables

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

(12)

(1) Animal crime rate

1.000

           

(2) Violent crime rate

 − 0.029

1.000

          

(3) Males15–29

 − 0.134*

0.273*

1.000

         

(4) Poverty risk

0.102*

0.277*

 − 0.095*

1.000

        

(5) Density

 − 0.073*

0.210*

0.339*

 − 0.178*

1.000

       

(6) Farms

0.188*

 − 0.275*

 − 0.315*

0.381*

 − 0.301*

1.000

      

(7) Divorced

 − 0.101*

0.252*

0.252*

 − 0.096*

0.278*

 − 0.388*

1.000

     

(8) Alcohol

 − 0.022

0.455*

0.017*

0.260*

0.044

 − 0.293*

0.254*

1.000

    

(9) Child welfare

0.094*

0.236*

 − 0.219*

0.454*

0.029

0.061*

0.116*

0.251*

1.000

   

(10) Voting

0.097*

 − 0.349*

 − 0.242*

 − 0.094*

 − 0.153*

0.433*

 − 0.385*

 − 0.192

 − 0.121*

1.000

  

(11) Pet owners

0.080*

0.056*

 − 0.124*

0.390*

 − 0.311*

0.176*

 − 0.190*

0.071*

0.097*

 − 0.006

1.000

 

(12) Single household

0.032

0.476*

 − 0.008*

0.653*

0.122*

 − 0.049

0.289*

0.508*

0.549*

 − 0.346*

0.200*

1.000

  1. * p < .05

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Burchfield, K.B., Markowitz, F.E. & Koskela, T. An Examination of Community-Level Correlates of Animal Welfare Offenses and Violent Crime in Finland. Int Criminol 2, 174–187 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43576-021-00039-6

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