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Howard-
You found my last news link interesting, so here's another.
Link
This happened close to me. For those that don't want to read the story, some sick f**ks skinned a dog alive.
Here's the question I'm putting out...
I believe crimes of this nature clearly indicate that the person responsible has a predisposition to much more serious crimes later in life. I know, it's just a dog, but should we treat crimes like this more seriously for the benefit of preventing more serious, future crimes?
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Without doing the research, my recollection is that it's well-established that some significant percentage of mass-murderers and other really evil folks start off with animal cruelty. Logically, though, that doesn't mean that everyone who is cruel to animals turns out to be Ted Bundy. For all we know, only a tiny percentage of animal abusers graduate to more serious crimes. From a due process perspective, I don't think the Constitution permits increased punishment for crimes that a person has not yet committed, so I think the strict answer to your question is no.
I think the idea behind three-strikes laws is to treat recidivism, but the criticism of those those laws is that they sweep in a bunch of people with relatively minor crimes and impose very harsh mandatory sentences.
I have a libertarian nut-job view of animal rights, so I'll stay away from my personal view of this issue unless someone is particularly intersted in it. It's likely to start a threadjack if I articulate it.