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. 2020 Oct 16;10(10):1902.
doi: 10.3390/ani10101902.

Punishment to Support: The Need to Align Animal Control Enforcement with the Human Social Justice Movement

Sloane M Hawes  1 , Tess Hupe  1 , Kevin N Morris  1
Affiliations

Punishment to Support: The Need to Align Animal Control Enforcement with the Human Social Justice Movement

Sloane M Hawes et al. Animals (Basel). .

Abstract

Due to inherent and systemic biases, animal control policies in the US are over-enforced in low-income communities and communities of color, resulting in worse health outcomes for the pets in these communities. These outcomes are exemplified by higher confiscation, relinquishment, and euthanasia rates, lower return to owner rates, and extended lengths of stay in animal shelters. The Humane Communities framework operationalizes One Health and One Welfare concepts to comprehensively address issues of inequity at both the individual and structural levels to improve animal control policy and outcomes. Person-centered and culturally competent policies and programs that focus resources on addressing root causes of pet health and welfare issues as opposed to an emphasis on code enforcement can create more positive, scalable, and sustainable improvements in human, other animal, and environmental health and welfare outcomes. This shift from punishment-oriented approaches to support-based models of animal control aligns the animal welfare field with the modern human social justice movement.

Keywords: access to care; animal control; companion animals; humane communities; one health; one welfare; policy; social justice; underserved communities.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

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