This chapter critically examines the rise of carceral strategies within the animal law movement, emphasizing the reliance on criminal prosecution as a primary means of achieving animal protection. It challenges assumptions that more policing, harsher penalties, and high-profile convictions inherently lead to justice for animals. Drawing on original research and public opinion data, the chapter explores how race, class, and political economy influence enforcement and public messaging. Ultimately, it argues that the punitive focus may obscure systemic animal suffering and hinder more transformative legal reforms.

Empirical Animal Law examines the animal protection movement through the lens of social science, testing the assumptions that have guided legal reform, criminal enforcement, litigation strategy, protest, and public messaging. Rather than prescribing a single agenda, the book asks a foundational question: Which animal law strategies measurably reduce suffering, and which rest on untested intuition? Across original empirical studies and interdisciplinary review, the authors investigate whether incremental welfare reforms pave the way for structural change; how cognitive biases shape moral concerns for animals used for food; whether the movement’s punitive turn reproduces the inequities of the broader criminal legal system; and whether litigation losses, protest tactics, and moral framing advance or undermine public support. The findings complicate conventional wisdom. Incremental reforms may catalyze further change; carceral strategies carry social costs without clear evidence of animal benefit; and persuasive success depends less on legal outcomes than on how facts are framed and moralized for diverse audiences. The book argues that animal law’s credibility and effectiveness depend on becoming empirically self-correcting – routinely measuring impact, revising strategies, and integrating insights from psychology, criminology, and social movement theory. It offers a framework for evidence-based advocacy aimed at durable, system-level change for animals.

This chapter critically examines the dominant role of criminal law in the animal protection movement, arguing that reliance on prosecution and punishment may harm rather than help efforts to reduce animal suffering. While carceral strategies – such as harsher laws and longer sentences – are often seen as necessary tools for advancing animal rights, the chapter questions whether they truly lead to meaningful change. Drawing on original empirical research, the authors show that individuals most engaged with animal rights are also the most supportive of punitive approaches, yet this support is narrowly focused on individual acts of cruelty rather than systemic harm like factory farming. The chapter warns that the emphasis on criminal enforcement may distract the public and advocates from addressing the structural, industrialized violence that causes far greater suffering. Additionally, carceral animal law may replicate broader societal harms, including racial and class disparities in enforcement.

This chapter considers the assumption that carceral animal law alleviates animal suffering, both at the federal and state level. It demonstrates how exclusions from what counts as cruelty in federal law (as in state law) legitimize systematic suffering of animals, Through two state-level case studies, it also shows how carceral animal law may be cruel or excessive itself while distracting attention from greater harms to animals.

Many animal lawyers react to critiques of carceral animal law by contending that punishment is no longer a priority, and that there are only but a handful of anecdotes about over-charging. One might listen to animal lawyers who support criminal interventions and conclude that incarceration is no longer a priority. But a critique of incarceration alone was never the point, and such a framing would actually let the movement off too easy. Prosecutions that do not result in sentences of imprisonment, under this logic, are examples of the merciful progression of animal law. This chapter focuses attention on the other-than-incarceration efforts that might be incorrectly conflated with leniency and just outcomes by animal advocates. Recognizing that for many of our readers, it will sound ridiculous to suggest that police interventions that do not lead to incarceration can be an over-reaction to animal crimes. Thus, a substantial portion of the chapter is comprised of short vignettes that describe the role of police in animal protection efforts that do not involve incarceration. These examples are not exhaustive, but they provide a foundation for thinking about how policing and prosecution that does not result in incarceration or even a conviction can be affirmatively bad for animals.