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CRUELTY Defined:
1. The quality or condition of being cruel.
2. Something, such as a cruel act
or remark, that causes pain or suffering.
3. Law. The infliction of physical or mental distress.
A cruel act or an instance of cruel behavior: barbarity, bestiality, brutality, inhumanity, savagery, truculence,
truculency. See attitude/good attitude/bad attitude/neutral attitude, kind/cruel.
The deliberate and malicious infliction of mental or physical pain upon persons or animals.
As applied to people, cruelty encompasses abusive, outrageous, and inhumane treatment that results in the wanton
and unnecessary infliction of suffering upon the body or mind.
Cruelty to animals involves the infliction of physical pain or death upon an animal, when unnecessary for
disciplinary, instructional, or humanitarian purposes, such as the release of the animal from incurable illness.
A person commits a misdemeanor if he or she intentionally or recklessly neglects any animal in his or her custody,
mistreats any animal, or kills or injures any animal without legal privilege or the consent of its owner.
The infliction of pain or distress unnecessarily.
CRUELTY TO ANIMALS Defined:
* c. to animals — an offense under existing Animal Cruelty laws and statutes, or similar legislation.
The definition of unnecessary cruelty varies between municipalities, counties, and states in America. Under the impetus of
a great body of community compassion the threhold has been greatly lowered in recent times. Determination of the prevailing
standard of cruelty can only be decided by Humane Police investigation, individual state legislation, and the courts.
— It is now taken to include, besides physical assault and surgery without
anesthesia, deprival of food, water and shelter. The worst kinds of cruelty are susceptible to the heaviest penalty, under
the classification of aggravated cruelty.
ANIMAL CRUELTY IS:
The crime of inflicting physical pain, suffering or death on an animal, usually a tame or domesticated one, beyond
necessity for normal discipline. It can include neglect that is so monstrous (withholding food and water) that the animal
has suffered, died or been put in imminent danger of death.
It is the willful or wanton infliction of pain, suffering, or death upon an animal or the intentional or malicious
neglect of an animal.
Perhaps the world's first anti-cruelty law, which addressed the treatment of domesticated animals, was included
in the legal code of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1641); similar legislation was passed in Britain in 1822.
The world's first animal welfare society, the Society for the Protection of Animals, was established in England
in 1824;
the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was chartered in 1866.
The New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in 1868.
In varying degrees, cruelty to animals is illegal in most states and even countries, and interest in endangered
species gave further impetus to the anticruelty movement in the late 20th century.
Reflecting such interest, many laws have been passed in New Jersey, and they are enforced, primarily, by the New
Jersey State SPCA Humane Police.
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