Beyond Cages
Animal Law and Criminal Punishment

Demonstrates how 'carceral animal law' strategies put animal protection efforts at war with general anti-oppression and civil rights efforts.

Justin Marceau (Author)

9781108417556, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 April 2019

298 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.54 kg

'Arguments that cruelty to nonhuman animals render humans cruel to each other date back to at least the eighteenth century. In this groundbreaking book, Justin Marceau explains how the criminalization of animal cruelty - often justified by the link between the human propensity to harm others humans if they are violent to nonhuman animals - has been a mistaken focus for the animal law movement. A law-and order approach, what Marceau calls 'Carceral Animal Law', does not fit with a civil rights movement for nonhuman animals. This is a very important intervention, working with what is often treated as common sense and breaking it down by asking the hard questions that need to be put about what is appropriate, effective, and humane when dealing with those who harm or abuse nonhuman animals. Beyond Cages is a must read for anyone interested in animal law, criminal law, and the (at times errant) logic of social justice movements past and present.' Angela Fernandez, University of Toronto

For all the diversity of views within the animal protection movement, there is a surprising consensus about the need for more severe criminal justice interventions against animal abusers. More prosecutions and longer sentences, it is argued, will advance the status of animals in law and society. Breaking from this mold, Professor Justin Marceau demonstrates that a focus on 'carceral animal law' puts the animal rights movement at odds with other social justice movements, and may be bad for humans and animals alike. Animal protection efforts need to move beyond cages and towards systemic solutions if the movement hopes to be true to its own defining ethos of increased empathy and resistance to social oppression. Providing new insights into how the lessons of criminal justice reform should be imported into the animal abuse context, Beyond Cages is a valuable contribution to the literature on animal welfare and animal rights law.

1. Introduction
2. Incarcerating humans as a salient feature of animal protection
3. Context: an overview of the mass criminalization problem
4. A descriptive account and typology of the carceral animal law system
5. Specific critiques of the carceral turn in animal protection
6. Race, mass-criminalization and animal law
7. Punishment and the 'Link' between animal abuse and human violence
8. Anticipating challenges to the critique of carceral animal law
9. Conclusion: towards a new research and advocacy agenda for animal protection.

Subject Areas: Animal law [LNKG], Criminal law & procedure [LNF], Human rights & civil liberties law [LNDC], Human rights [JPVH]