CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Animal cruelty nowadays is extremely being of our daily life. Animal cruelty is crime cases today especially in Malaysia. Physical abuse, substituting human victims for animal victims, socially unacceptable behaviour that causes pain, suffering or distress and the death of an animal toward animal are common types animal cruelty happens nowadays. Homes, colleges, food court, and in market are places where people do the crime on animal.
Animal cruelty can be considered as same as crime, can be indicator prime, can be predictor crime and cruelty to animal destabilizes communities (Lockwood, 2006). In 1997, two teenagers wielding baseball bats broke into an animal shelter in Fairfield, Iowa, killing 17 cats and seriously injuring a dozen more. Their subsequent prosecution attracted worldwide attention, and coverage of the story in people magazine drew the most reader mail of any event ever covered except the death of Princess Diana. That same year, four teens in Kansas City, Kansas, were successfully prosecuted for felony arson for the burning and bludgeoning of a small dog. They had videotaped the event and excerpts from the tape were broadcast worldwide. The prosecutor in the case received over 5,000 letters in support of her pursuit of the case (Lockwood, 2006).
Animal cruelty according to Ascione (1993) this definition excludes practices that may cause harm to animals yet are socially condoned (e.g., legal hunting, certain agricultural and veterinary practices). Because the status of a particular animal may vary from one culture to another, the definition takes into account the social contexts that help determine what is considered animal abuse. For the purposes of this review, the animals that are victims of abuse are most often vertebrates because this is the category of animals to which are attributed the greatest capacity for experiencing and displaying pain and