Species justice and harm to animals - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 118

dogs in police enforcement tactics, and the use of animals in prisoner
rehabilitation schemes (see Agnew, 1998; Cazaux, 1999; Beirne, 2011).
Considerable research has also recently been carried out on the social
processes associated with offending and the characteristics of offenders
in regards to specific types of animal-related crimes. For instance, in a
landmark study that explores why people harm and kill animals, Nurse
(2013) has developed a new typology of offender motivations. The
classification of offenders is based upon systematic research undertaken
in the United Kingdom (and the United States) that examined offender
justifications for what they do. Nurse (2013) identified five discrete,
although not mutually exclusive, categories of offenders:
• traditional criminals - personal benefit from crimes such as wildlife
trafficking
• economic criminals - employment-related crime (for example, killing
protected birds to ensure safety of local game and habitats)
• masculinities criminals - exercise of stereotypical masculine nature
(for example, linked to sport and gambling)
• hobby criminals - collection and acquisition (for example, egg
collector)
• stress ofenders - involved in animal harm as a result of their own
stress or abuse (for example, children who suffer abuse).
The importance of this typology is not only that it provides more
detailed knowledge about offenders. Nurse (2013) also observes that
understanding different motivations has major implications for how we
might respond to these kinds of animal harms. Specifically, he argues
that calls for harsher penalties for animal cruelty, often spearheaded by
NGOs such as the RSPCA, are too simplistic and generally ineffective
if and when translated into policy and practice. This is because such
demands generally fail to account for the lack of success of the
traditional criminal justice system already in dealing with serious crime
(much less animal harms). Moreover, they miss the point that a 'one-
size-fits-all' response is neither appropriate nor effective in the face
of diverse motivations for and circumstances of animal harm crimes.
Similar observations and conclusions are evident in recent studies of
poaching (see McMullan and Perrier, 2002; Forthsyth et al, 1998; Bell
et al, 2007; Zhang et al, 2008; Green, 2011; Piries and Clarke, 2011;
Kahler and Gore, 2012). These studies establish that people are engaged
in poaching for a variety of reasons, and these reasons are partly related
to immediate social context (for example, exotic consumer products
for the new middle classes in China; traditional hunting practices in