Abstract
This paper contributes to a rethinking of animal abuse control and animal welfare protection in criminology, specifically, and in the social sciences more broadly. We do this, first, through a broad mapping of the institutional control complex around animal abuse in contemporary Britain. Second, we focus on the institutional strategies and practices, past and present, of the main agency of animal protection, and the policing thereof, in this society, namely the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). In looking back to this charity’s growth since the first decades of the nineteenth century at the time of the birth of modern industrial capitalism and also to its current rationale and practices as a late-modern, corporate organisation, we explore the seeming paradox of a private body taking a lead on the regulation and prosecution of illegalities associated with animal-human relationships. Finally, the ideology and strategy of the RSPCA are explored in the context of the often visceral and culturally influential ‘morality war’ associated with proponents, respectively, of animal rights (‘abolition’) and ‘anthropic’ welfare proponents (‘regulation’ and ‘protection’).
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Notes
Historians have not been so guilty of this neglect, as we shall see below. The silence of most criminologists may reflect both the state-based, criminal justice system focus of modern criminology and also the more widely acknowledged marginality of animal abuse to the sociological study of crime and its control.
The study of social harms, recently badged as ‘zemiology’, would appear an appropriate home for the growing research surrounding harms done to animals, including those in sport, entertainment and farming for they are legal activities that animal welfare and animal rights lobbies have thus far been unable to inveigle governments to criminalise. Whilst it may seem obvious to situate animal abuse within zemiology there is little evidence to demonstrate zemiologists have open arms. For example, Hillyard et al. ([42] p.48) catalogue a vast array of social harms at corporate, state and international levels yet animal abuse is overlooked.
The prefix ‘Royal’ was added later as a result of formal royal patronage from Queen Victoria in 1840.
This accusation of an obsession with the dangerous habits of the lower orders or in contemporary argot, the ‘underclass’, has been reaffirmed with regard to the RSPCA’s role in the policing and control of ‘dangerous’ dogs by libertarian journalists (O’Neil, [43]) and libertarian criminologists (Hallsworth, this issue, Kaspersson, [41]) alike.
Despite the inclusion of the term ‘prevention’ in its title, it is the enforcement of the law with which the RSPCA is most associated, both internally (Lawson, [34]) and in the broader public perception of its mission. In terms of notions of crime and harm prevention involving an emphasis of proactive actions before crimes or harms ensue, the preventive role of the RSPCA remains underdeveloped (see Hughes et al. [9]) despite the provisions in the AWA noted above. As noted previously, much of the day-to-day work of the RSPCA is filling in an enforcement and prosecutorial ‘void’ and providing a governmental function which the state has not addressed directly. In the words of a leading RSPCA spokesperson at its Status Dogs Summit in 2010, commenting on the policy transfer implications of the ‘British model’ for policing and law enforcement of animal abuse, ‘An NGO taking the slack is not the best model to start with’.
Animal rights critics of the RSPCA say little, it would seem, about its routine repression of animal cruelty and regular prosecution of human perpetrators which, as is clear from our previous analysis, makes up a very significant area of its work and institutional logic.
Of course, we do not come to this debate ‘value-free’ and ‘politics-free’. Our broad normative position is that of humanitarian and anthropocentric welfarism. We remain wary of the more ‘karmic’ direction in debates on human/non human animal interface whereby the human is re-absorbed into natural history ([45] p.5). We broadly concur with the modernist founders of sociology on the uniqueness of the human animal as residing in their ‘participation in large-scale corporate projects that defy the gene’s eye-view of the world’ ([45] p.6), not least at times in reversing or neutralising the effects of ‘natural selection’. This is indeed a feature of both animal protection and animal rights political projects.
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Hughes, G., Lawson, C. RSPCA and the criminology of social control. Crime Law Soc Change 55, 375–389 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-011-9292-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-011-9292-7