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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

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Pit bull Owners Are More Likely to Be Criminals Study Shows

Criminals Own Vicious Dogs
Ohio - People who own vicious dogs such as pit bulls have significantly more criminal convictions than owners of licensed, gentler dogs such as beagles, a study reports. The study of 355 dog owners showed that every owner of a high-risk breed known for aggression had at least one brush with the law, from traffic citations to serious criminal convictions. 30% of people who owned an aggressive breed of dog, and who also had been cited at least once for failure to register it, had at least five criminal convictions or traffic citations.

This compared to 1% percent of owners of low-risk, licensed dogs such as poodles, beagles or collies. The study was published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. In the study, author Jaclyn Barnes states:
"Owners of vicious dogs who have been cited for failing to register a dog (or) failing to keep a dog confined on the premises ... are more than nine times more likely to have been convicted for a crime involving children, three times more likely to have been convicted of domestic violence ... and nearly eight times more likely to be charged with drug (crimes) than owners of low-risk licensed dogs."
Barnes and colleagues used public records to check the criminal pasts of dog owners. They used agreed definitions of vicious dogs used in writing local ordinances. "A 'vicious dog' means a dog that, without provocation, has killed or caused serious injury to any person, has killed another dog, or belongs to a breed that is commonly known as a pit bull dog," they wrote in their report (the State of Ohio deems all pit bulls as "vicious"). The most frequent low-risk breeds seen in the study included terriers, beagles, collies and poodles.
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5 comments:

Anonymous Anonymous  |  1/30/2008 12:41 PM  |  Flag  
Not surprising. You have to live under a rock to not know the risk associated with this breed by now.

Anonymous Anonymous  |  1/30/2008 3:26 PM  |  Flag  
Not surprising at all...I would love to see similar studies done in other areas; anecdotally, I can tell you that in my neighborhood, the two pit bull owners have criminal records.

I think if you repeated the study elsewhere, you would find similar results. At a minimum, I believe the people who are attracted to this breed often have strong anti-social tendencies.

Anonymous Dee  |  1/31/2008 1:56 AM  |  Flag  
Interesting and poignant that this organization did such a study.

Anonymous Anonymous  |  6/19/2009 10:22 AM  |  Flag  
Well, instead of looking at this as two bad things that go together, I think that this is more of a cause and effect thing. I've worked in rescue for YEARS and let me tell you: People who own pits are not only more likely to be criminals, but also more likely to keep the dog in conditions ripe for making aggressive dogs. If we ban pitbulls, those same owners are just going to put another dog in their backyard and forget it's there. Another thing is that these folks are also more likely to fight their dogs, or breed them for money. Bad breeding in the pitbull line is another real problem. Since they are so popular, the instance of breeding dogs that should never ever have been bred due to their poor temprements end up popping out dozens of puppies, that end up in someone's backyard, some outdoor pen, or on a tether. Cause and effect people.

Anonymous Anonymous  |  10/16/2009 4:24 PM  |  Flag  
I am living this nightmare right next door in my neighbors' backyard. She has these young sons who won't go to school, and have all the signs of being criminals, have no respect for other people's rights and spend their every waking hour transporting one pit bulldog after another. They do everything that they can to make these dogs aggressive and the point is that they don't even have a fenced in yard. They use my fence as a one side for them and then keep them chained up. They bring in dogs for the purpose of forced breeding. I really don't know if any of the dogs belong to them or not because so many have passed through. I am totally fed up with these activities. They house the dog(sometimes as many as 5 at a time) right at my fence which is less than 25 feet from my bedroom window. I am now checking into our local law about these dogs. They are so plentious in my communtity and I am ready to take back my community!

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