Animal maltreatment law: Evolving efforts to protect animals and their forensic mental health implications

Animals have long formed an important part of human communities and served various roles in human activities. Some of the earliest human civilizations developed laws that protected animals for assorted reasons, including their economic value, religious beliefs pertaining to animals, and societal concerns about cleanliness. In the 1800s, Western thinkers began to view animals as having rights of their own and proposed legislation that changed the legal landscape regarding animal maltreatment. In the United States today there are widely varying laws designed to address the various forms of animal maltreatment. Each state's laws are different. Some states have modern statutes designed to identify and punish animal maltreatment, and others are relatively lax in their consideration of what constitutes abuse. The purpose of this article is to review the development of animal maltreatment legislation from ancient civilization to the present day in the United States; to identify current legislative reforms designed to assist in investigating and prosecuting animal abusers; to describe the role that forensic mental health experts may play in evaluating abusers for a variety of related concerns, including violence risk, sexual violence risk, and fitness for guardianship of an animal; and to delineate areas requiring further research to improve the forensic evaluation of animal abusers.