Shelley at Retrospectacle has linked to an this article in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence (news article) about how pit bull owners are more likely to have criminal records.

The abstract itself is kind of amazing:

This study examined the association between ownership of high-risk ("vicious") dogs and the presence of deviant behaviors in the owners as indicated by court convictions. We also explored whether two characteristics of dog ownership (abiding licensing laws and choice of breed) could be useful areas of inquiry when assessing risk status in settings where children are present. Our matched sample consisted of 355 owners of either licensed or cited dogs that represented high or low-risk breeds. Categories of criminal convictions examined were aggressive crimes, drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, crimes involving children, firearm convictions, and major and minor traffic citations. Owners of cited high-risk ("vicious") dogs had significantly more criminal convictions than owners of licensed low-risk dogs. Findings suggest that the ownership of a high-risk ("vicious") dog can be a significant marker for general deviance and should be an element considered when assessing risk for child endangerment.

This is a pretty remarkable statement. The authors are actually suggesting one of the indicators for social workers checking up on kids is whether or not the parent or guardian owns one of these dogs. And the thing is, their data supports it.



Here in their third figure you see clear, statistically significant correlations between ownership of problem breeds, such as pitbulls and rottweilers, and criminal behavior, and often violent behavior

It's been a hypothesis of mine for a while that pitbulls aren't the worst dogs, but they attract the worst owners. Based on observations in my own experience, like our neighbors who had a dozen pitbulls staked in the yard and left them out all day because he was clearly running a mill for fighting, to a friends' neighbor who was evicted and abandoned his pit in the backyard until they call the SPCA. These experiences, and others, have led me to the conclusion that there are two reasons that assholes like these dogs. The first is the "dog as extension of penis" set, who are macho assholes who want a tough dog to match their tough persona and tough tattoo of barbed wire around their arm. The second is the blatantly criminal/can't own/carry a handgun types who own the dog essentially as a weapon they can use to intimidate people with legally in public. These guys aren't interested in a pet, they're interested in a status symbol, and the animals suffer, as well as the occasional kid who gets mauled and his face chewed off.

I particularly liked this comment from Shelley's blog:

Seeing the owners of the dogs go in and out of that clinic over the years, it got to where I could predict the kind of dog it was just by watching the owners get out of the car. You would think logically that it would be old feeble people that would have the powerful dog for protection. But no, walking in with the pit bull, it was so often the young, macho, knuckle draggers whose biggest accomplishment in life was being able to say "My dog can kill your dog".

The third subset of pit owners, who are the majority by far, are the non-assholes who like their dog, will feed it and take care of it, etc. and aren't the problem. However, their dogs will be painted with the same brush as the dogs being improperly raised by the knuckle-dragging thug types.

So here's the question for the anti-breed-specific legislation people who are trying to prevent their pits from being taken away because of abuse by the morons who also like these breed. What can we do to make it so that the knuckle-dragging, macho, immature, moronoic, and criminal types can't own these dogs, but the caring, pitbull-loving types can still raise and socialize these dogs properly? Is there room for compromise? Maybe passing a law that will bar people with felony or serious misdemeanors from owning problem breeds?