The Drivers of Community Expectations Surrounding Punishment for Animal Welfare Offences: Findings From Online Focus Group Discussions

Abstract

Animal welfare legislation reform has commonly been attributed to the need to increase alignment with the community’s expectations, which supposes that the community has the power to drive legislative change. Despite this assertion, there has been minimal research on the content and drivers of these expectations in Australia. Whilst limited sociological research has identified what the public expects of animal welfare law, there have been no studies aimed at understanding why the public have those expectations, especially in relation to punitive expectations. Using online focus groups, this study investigated the influencers of participant opinions around animal welfare law enforcement to provide a greater understanding of the drivers of these supposed community expectations. Using thematic analysis, five drivers were generated: (1) the degree of animal suffering; (2) providing assistance over punishment; (3) the role of media reporting; (4) how to deter offenders; and (5) the intentions of the offender. Our findings indicate that the public instinctively takes highly punitive approaches to sentencing for animal cruelty, but their responses tend to be modified through conscious reasoning when provided with information around the facts and circumstances of particular cases. Such findings could suggest that the public are not as punitive as legislators perceive them to be when it comes to animal welfare law.