Legislative Action

Oakland University

Legislative Action Assignment

June 5, 2017

Legislative Summary

        The legislation I chose is Senate Bill No. 0413. On May 30, 2017, this bill was introduced and referred to the Committee of Judiciary by Senators Steven Bieda, Margaret Obrien, Rick Jones, Curtis Hertel, Tory Rocca, Jack Brandenburg and Marty Knollenberg. The purpose of Bill No. 0413 is to amend 1931 PA 328 (known as The Michigan Penal Code) by amending section 49. In the last 4 years, animal cruelty has been rapidly on the rise and a main topic so society. So much so that in 2016 the FBI had to add a new category now known as the animal cruelty defense to place these specific crimes (National Anti-Vivisection Society 2017). Currently, this bill is in the senate and being refereed to committee of the whole.

        Section 49 is extremely important when it comes to animal rights. According to The Senate Fiscal Agency (2017), “Bill No. 0413 would amend the Michigan Penal Code by (1) mandating a term of imprisonment for a person who committed a felony related to fighting, baiting, or shooting an animal and had one or more prior convictions for such an offense (2) Specify that a person who failed to comply with an order prohibiting the ownership or possession of an animal would be guilty of a misdemeanor (3) Allow… a humane society… to apply to a court for a hearing to euthanize a seized animal that been used or trained to fight” (p. 1). The reason this bill was introduced was because there has been a growing number of incidences’ relating to animal abuse/cruelty. Social media may have something to do with the this due to the fact that everyone can now post and see what any individual is doing, which in turn can affect the number of animal abuse incidences’ being reported. According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), “…animal cruelty investigations rose 5 percent last year… The increase may be due to in part to more and more members of public seeing animal cruelty on social media - and then reporting it” (Ingham 2017).

        Bill No. 0413 implies that there needs to be harsher consequences and higher fines for those who commit a crime towards any kind of animal such as baiting, fighting, or shooting them. This bills fiscal impact may be somewhat negative for our state and maybe even local government. “Increased penalties for misdemeanor or felony convictions could increase resource demands on community supervision, jails, ad correctional facilities” (Bill Analysis, 2017, p. 2). But the overall impact Bill No. 0413 will have on the state will be positive. Harsher consequences and higher penalties for the perpetrations will hopefully lower the amount of animal abuse/cruelty and overall crime. Animal abuse/cruelty is a very sad but real problem our state faces and this new bill plans to lower the percentage of animal abuse cases reported.