The palgrave international handbook of a 347

Animal Fighting

345

Table 1 Total dog fighting prosecutions and convictions recorded by the Ministry of
Justice, 2009–2014
Outcome

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Proceeded Against
Found guilty

8
4

2
1

13
7

7
4

17
7

10
5

Although they had sourced previous reports from the RSPCA, no commentary has been supplied as to whether the figures year on year are comparable.
Furthermore, Harding and Nurse (2015, p. 43) contend that a range of
organisations, such as the League Against Cruel Sports, are involved in
compiling animal fighting figures, but this is somewhat misleading. While
many organisations may comment from a distance on crimes against animals
and indeed discuss unrecorded or under-reported crimes of this nature, the
detection, investigation and prosecution is largely left to the RSPCA in
England and Wales and far less frequently, the police, who often have little
or no resource with which to act alone.
The RSPCA’s data would suggest that in fact dog fighting has remained
relatively consistent over a 10 year period. However, the figures for convictions do not reveal the number of defendants. In many cases, one
defendant will receive several fighting convictions. It is also not possible
to determine the breakdown for informal and formal classifications of dog
fighting within these figures or thereby, if there has been an increase in one
category corresponding to a decrease in another. Evidence is emerging that
the phenomenon of status dogs may have had an impact on the reporting of
street dog fighting. Local authorities in the UK, such as those in inner city
London may sometimes collect reports from within their own managed
housing estates or in other areas where they operate or participate in
responsible dog ownership schemes. Some of these councils who have

previously received a number of dog fighting complaints are now reporting
fewer concerns from residents. Their own research has revealed that these
reports were often from people who had been influenced by the media and
succumbed to the associated moral panic. When they observed dogs hanging by their jaws from tree branches, they had assumed they were witnessing the preparation for a dog fight. In reality there was very little to
support the notion of actual dog fighting. (Lawson forthcoming).
There is an innate difficulty in determining the extent of professional dog
fighting in the UK, given its clandestine and impregnable networks. When
offences have been detected it can still be a challenge to secure a successful
conviction given the seemingly innocent way in which dogs can be kept and
their injuries and minor paraphernalia explained away in court. One of the