While not all wildlife crime involves violence or violent abuse, where it does occur it indicates that offenders may develop a tendency towards violence that manifests itself first in non-human animal abuse, but which sometimes escalates into interpersonal human violence frequently committed by adults against a range of victims (Nurse, 2009; Flynn, 2009). Violent activities involving wildlife may also indicate existing violent tendencies, serving as a means through which individuals can exercise their aggression or power-based behaviours. Wildlife crimes such as illegal hunting and trapping are violent acts that often result in the death or severe injury to non-human animals. The seriousness of the violence involved is sometimes dismissed by those involved via anthropocentric perspectives that view non-human animal life as less important than human life and use a range of neutralisation techniques (Sykes and Matza, 1957) to dismiss the problematic nature of much killing of non-human animals. Our wildlife criminology project is concerned with the extent to which violence inflicted on non-human animals is not only a problem in and of itself, but also may link to notions of violence in wider society. Criminological, theological and psychological discourse has also examined the extent to which abuse of non-human animals is linked to interpersonal violence (Linzey, 2009). Debates on this topic frequently identify that non-human animal abuse can be considered as a precursor to or indicator of later human violence.

Our wildlife criminology themes of violence and of speciesism and othering are explicit in discussions of the links between wildlife and interpersonal violence, which we explore in this chapter. We consider both general conceptions on the links between wildlife and interpersonal violence and the specific focus on the extent to which harm caused to wildlife may be an indicator of violent tendencies and possible predictor of future violence. Experts estimate that from 48% to 71% of battered women have non-human companion animals who have also been abused or killed and the link between domestic [non-human] animal abuse and human violence is widely recognised by scholars and law enforcement professionals (Linzey, 2009). Much of the literature in this area concerns the links between companion animal abuse and human violence and the notion that where one exists the other is also likely to occur.