Efforts to reduce animal abuse will continue to be hampered unless society finds ways to increase reporting and to ensure that penalities are appropriate.

That is according to Dr Tania Signal, a senior lecturer in Psychology at CQUniversity, who will present a FREE public talk about community responses to animal abuse.

Dr Tania Signal

Partly entitled Lock ‘em up and throw away the key?, the talk will be presented from 1pm-2pm on Friday March 27 at Rockhampton Campus (Building 33-G.14).

"The last decade has seen an increased awareness concerning links between violence to animals and violence to humans," Dr Signal said.

"In order to reduce the prevalence of animal cruelty (and attendant risk for other forms of violence), we need to increase community reporting of animal abuse and ensure that the penalties applied by criminal justice system are appropriate," she said.

"There is a need to determine which variables influence an individual's willingness to report deliberate animal cruelty/abuse. Demographic and attitudinal variables found to impact propensity to report will be discussed."

Dr Signal says that reporting abuse is only half the story.  She says current penalties for animal abuse (as applied by the judiciary) are often minimal or non-existent, with the attendant message that this sends regarding the seriousness of this type of crime.

"The second half of this talk will present findings from a project which aimed to assess opinions regarding the appropriateness of current penalties for deliberate animal harm (where the animal in question dies as a result of the abuse).

"Implications of these findings will be discussed."

Dr Signal's talk is presented by CQUniversity's Institute for Health and Social Science Research.