Mr. Piers Beirne

Authors: Piers Beirne & Nigel South
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Introduction: Approaching green criminology, Piers Beirne (University of Southern Maine) and Nigel South (University of Essex)
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3 Animal rights, animal abuse and green criminology, Piers Beirne (University of Southern Maine)

In an essay reproduced at www.asairs.com , Piers Beirne , chairman of the department of criminology at the University of Southern Maine , in Portland , where he teaches a course on animal abuse , wrote that 24 states now have laws against bestiality , and seven more are considering them.

In Maine , he said , bestiality was once considered a crime against God and brought a sentence of 10 years of hard labor.The law loosened up after World War II.But now a bill before the Maine State Legislature proposes to recriminalize bestiality on the ground that it is cruel to animals and linked with domestic violence.
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The main effect of Mr. Singer's review , Mr. Beirne said , will be the one that he intended : A subject which for centuries was taboo will now be out in the open..But something else has changed.Now when it comes to bestiality , the debate is not so much about what God wants as what animals want.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

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Piers Beirne - Professor of Criminology at the University of Southern Maine.ASAIRS thanks Mr. Beirne for all of the years he has spent researching and writing on this issue and for speaking out against animal sexual abuse.

ASPCA - American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for their tremendous efforts in the assistance of drafting bills and the lobbying for the criminalization of bestiality in various states.Specificly to Ledy VanKavage for her individual efforts to get such legislation introduced and passed in the Midwest.
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Piers BeirneDepartment of Criminology
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(and republished by ASAIRS with exclusive permission of the author, Piers Beirne)

PIERS BEIRNE is Professor of Criminology at the University of Southern Maine and the founding editor of the journal Theoretical Criminology.
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Besides mandating death for humans, Leviticus also dictates that the offending animal be put to death, a practice that reached its zenith in certain late-medieval European societies (Beirne, 1994).
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Beirne, Piers (1994) "The Law is an Ass: Reading E.P. Evans' The Medieval Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals", Society and Animals 2(1):27-46

Beirne, Piers (1995) "The Use and Abuse of Animals in Criminology: A Brief History and Current Review", SocialJustice 22(1):5-31

Piers Beirne UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MAINE

Piers Beirne (University of Southern Maine)