Practitioners in the animal welfare field, law enforcement circles, and social services arena have often maintained that childhood cruelty to animals is a forerunner to violence against people. Does this behavior serve as a red flag with respect to extremely violent offenders, such as serial killers? Is it part of the cycle of violence associated with domestic abuse? Perez and Heide provide the first scientific examination of this relationship and examine issues of cruelty across different types of animals (pet, wild, stray, farm). The authors evaluate both qualitative and quantitative data to identify correlations between childhood cruelty and adult violent behavior, utilizing interviews and criminal records of violent and nonviolent inmates in a maximum security prison. Their findings will be of importance to a diverse audience, including researchers and practitioners in the field of juvenile justice, violence and domestic abuse, social welfare, animal welfare and animal rights and developmental psychologists and counselors, as well as law enforcement officers, district attorneys and judges, county and municipal officials, animal control officers, veterinarians, and school administrators, especially those concerned with intervention and prevention strategies.

By Linda Merz-Perez and Kathleen M. Heide

1 FOREWORD
2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
3 Part I: ANIMAL CRUELTY: THE CURRENT STATE Current State of Knowledge
4 Chapter 1: Animal Cruelty Encapsulated
5 Chapter 2: A Review of the Related Literature
6 Chapter 3: Three Theories of Offenders
7 PART II: ANIMAL CRUELTY AND SUBSEQUENT HUMAN VIOLENCE: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION
8 Chapter 4: Method and Study Design
9 Chapter 5: Findings
10 PART III: UNDERSTANDING THOSE WHO HURT ANIMALS: IN-DEPTH PORTRAITS
11 Chapter 6: Case Studies of Three Theories of Violent Offenders
12 Chapter 7: Non-Violent Offenders Investigated
13 PART IV: A BLUEPRINT TO END SENSELESS PAIN AND DESTRUCTION
14 Chapter 8: Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations
15 AFTERWORD
16 References
17 Index
18 About the Authors