Impact Of Animal Cruelty And Future Interpersonal Violence: A Quantitative Study Of Disposed Animal Cruelty Cases And Criminal Histories In Texas.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20394209

This study uses quantitative analysis to examine whether individuals arrested for animal cruelty have a higher likelihood of domestic violence chargers compared to a control group of property offenders. Examination of a secondary data set provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety utilizes logistic regression analysis to determine whether individuals who have committed an animal cruelty offense are more likely than comparison group of property offenders to have future domestic violence offenses. A random sample of 414 male animal cruelty offenders, and a control group of property offenders, were evaluated to identify the likelihood of future domestic violence offenses. Offender criminal histories were employed to control for previous domestic violence offenses and age. Female offenders were also excluded from the study. The logistic regression found that animal cruelty offenders were not more likely than the control group to have future domestic violence offenses (p = 0.076) and failed to reject the null hypothesis.