Starting in November, convicted animal abusers in the county that includes Tampa will be easier to identify. Their names, photos and addresses will be published on a county-run website that is publicly searchable and similar to the online sex offender registries that have proliferated since the 1990s.
The animal abuser registry, passed last week by commissioners in Hillsborough County, is aimed at preventing people who have harmed animals from doing so again. Retailers and shelters will be required to have prospective pet adopters or purchasers sign an affidavit saying they're not on the registry. Regular people seeking pet-sitters or new homes for their animals will be able to vet candidates. Law enforcement officials will, at least in theory, be able to keep tabs on offenders' whereabouts.
The county is the latest in a tiny but growing group of U.S. jurisdictions to adopt such registries. A handful of New York counties have them, as does New York City, although that one isn't accessible to the public. Cook County, Ill., whose county seat is Chicago, recently decided to create one. Tennessee started the first statewide registry in January, although it still has just three people on its list.
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”There are different degrees of abuse. There are offenders who intentionally kill or torture animals, or who are engaged in dogfighting. On the other end of the spectrum, there are pet owners who have an inadequate doghouse," Shatkin said. ”We wouldn't want to paint both types of offenders with the same brush."
Among the skeptics is the Humane Society of the United States, whose president and chief executive, Wayne Pacelle, wrote in 2010 that the ”overwhelming proportion of animal abuse is perpetrated by people who neglect their own animals" and are unlikely to commit violence against other people and pets.
”Such individuals would pose a lesser threat to animals in the future if they received comprehensive mental health counseling," Pacelle wrote at the time. ”Shaming them with a public Internet profile is unlikely to affect their future behavior — except perhaps to isolate them further from society and promote increased distrust of authority figures trying to help them."
