Sheriff Joe Arpaio joined an ASU professor and other officials to condem violence against our furry friends Friday in downtown Phoenix.
Arpaio said he has seen firsthand that people who are cruel to animals are more likely to harm other humans. The conference only strengthened that causal relationship, he said.
"I've been saying it for years - and I've been in law enforcement for years," Arpaio said. "It's easy ... to continue saying everything leads to humans, but when you see it, it brings home that it's true."
He was only one out of several speakers at an animal-cruelty conference largely organized by Christina Risley-Curtiss, an ASU associate professor of social work.
Violence in families often moves downward from parents to children, Risley-Curtiss said. The behavior then moves all the way down to Fluffy and Fido.
"In violent families, people are often taught that there are people around that are 'less than,'" Risley-Curtiss said. "The children are seen as 'less than,' so it's OK to hurt them. The animals are seen as even less than the children, so it's OK to hurt them."
Crimes ranging from school shootings to serial killing sprees have been foreshadowed by past incidences of cruelty to animals, said Randy Lockwood, vice president of research and educational outreach for the Humane Society of the United States, who also spoke at the forum.
"It's about power and control," Lockwood said, directing the audience to look at a large slide showing a picture of the severed, desiccated head of a dead dog.
Jeffrey Dahmer had killed the animal long before he became a serial killer and cannibal.
"It's violent behavior that gives young people a sense of control and has no other consequences other than this sense of power," Lockwood said.
Arpaio said he is certain that people treat animals and humans in related ways, and encourages prison inmates to care for animals in some of his jails. He added that he has developed an animal-shelter program to ease the minds of women who must leave their homes to enter an abused women's shelter.
Risley-Curtiss studies the relationships between people and their often four-legged companions, and said that cruelty is one facet of the many kinds of relationships people can have with animals. One of her research projects studies these relationships throughout different world cultures. Risley-Curtiss said she wants to develop a model that studies relationships within these cultures.
She said her model, though not limited to studying violence, could help explain differences in how animals are treated in a family. The degree of acculturation, or adjustment to a dominant culture, can affect how pets are perceived, Risley-Curtiss said.
Risley-Curtiss said in studying groups of women from other cultures and their pets, greater adjustment to the dominant culture around them seemed to make people more likely to view a pet as a family member.
"The more acculturated the women were, the more they saw pets as family members," Risley-Curtiss said. "A family member could be the dog in the front yard."
About 92 percent of Americans view pets as family members, she said, citing a survey she conducted with another professor at ASU.
The conference, held Friday inside the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors' Auditorium in downtown Phoenix, continued Saturday at ASU with workshops designed to inform local officials and citizens about the human-animal violence link.
Reach the reporter at nicole.saidi@asu.edu.
This story was modified June 29, 2005. It was incorrectly reported that ASU Professor Christina Risley-Curtiss was doing research on linking animal and family violence, that family and animal violence are being linked to social and economic status, and that higher social status leads to pets being better accepted as family members. Her research project focuses on all animal and family relationships in terms of world cultures, examines cultural relationships rather than social status, and has led to conclusions that greater adjustment to a dominant culture leads to greater acceptance of a pet as a family member.
