Animal Cruelty What is Animal cruelty? Animal Cruelty is when someone hurts an animal or doesn’t care for the animal responsibly. Animal cruelty can be deliberate abuse (Deliberate means “done consciously and intentionally.”) or failure to take care of the animal. The animal could suffer badly. People with emotional problems might beat, shoot or stab animals… even set the animal on fire. Neglecting the animal means not giving it enough or any at all of what it needs to survive, like food, water or shelter. Even not giving it the care that they need if injured or sick and not taking the animal to the vet. When witnessing animal cruelty, you should not try and stop the person from doing it that could put yourself in a dangerous situation. Just tell an adult or somebody and call for help.
All U.S states have laws on animal cruelty. Forty-Seven states treat some cases of animal cruelty as a felony/crime. Laws relating to animals can vary widely from state to state. Penalties of animal cruelty are:
First offence – 60 Days of imprisonment and/or a $500 fine
Second offence – 90 Days of imprisonment and/or a $800 fine
Third subsequent offence – 20 Years of imprisonment and/or a $2,000 fine
Fourth offence – 5 Years and/or a $5,000 fine
Those were the penalties of animal cruelty, but I think they should be stricter than that. Hurting an animal in any way, should have a larger fine then what it already is. Whoever abused the animal should get help by going to classes, because the cause of the abuse may have been because the person was angry at himself/herself and took it out on the animal. Ringling Brother’s Circus was fined $270,000 on November 28, 2011 because the trainers tied up the baby Elephants and electric shocked them. The trainers electric shocked them, hit them with bull hooks, and whipped them only to get