Animals as Crime Victims

This innovative and prescient book offers a multidisciplinary framework which reconceptualizes maltreated animals as crime victims. Articulating more active and involved responses to animal maltreatment, Animals as Crime Victims provides guidance to attorneys, law enforcement personnel, veterinarians, and educators by reimagining how animals are positioned within the law. Lacey Levitt, David B. Rosengard, and Jessica Rubin bring together expert contributors from various fields who argue for reconceptualizing animals as crime victims and examine the legal ramifications of doing so. Chapters explore how recognition as crime victims not only makes animals and their own interests visible within the law but affords them substantive rights. Alongside a proposed legal framework, this incisive book details modern scientific discoveries regarding the complexity of animals' cognition and emotions and the historical and contemporary sociological shifts in our relationships with animals. Animals as Crime Victims will be a vital read for academics, students, and practitioners whose work focuses on animal maltreatment, animal law, or human-animal studies. Including in-depth examples, practical information, and exploration of substantive law alongside legal theory, this book will be useful to lawyers, law enforcement personnel, criminologists, and veterinary and mental health professionals confronting crimes against animals or the humans committing them.