Animal programs have arguably done a world of good since they were introduced to prisons in the 1970s.
In caring for animals such as dogs, horses and cats, incarcerated participants have benefited from improved mental health, empathy and self-regulation, as well as skill development and an empowering sense of purpose, according to University of Alberta professor Chloë Taylor of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies in her forthcoming book, Animals and the Prison Industrial Complex, co-written with Kelly Struthers Montford of Toronto Metropolitan University.
Prisons for men report a reduction in toxic masculinity, since program participants are encouraged to express affection and adopt softer, more nurturing behaviours. They are also less likely to reoffend after release, say Taylor and Montford, as the programs foster greater emotional maturity and a stronger sense of responsibility.
“I know everyone considers us vermin and convicts, and sure, we screwed up,” says one participant in Colorado’s Wild Horse Inmate Program. “But the last time they held an adoption, the outside people gave us all a round of applause, and for the first time in a long time, we felt like real human beings.”
Yet for all of the purported benefits of prison animal programs, there are problems too easily ignored in scholarly and media portrayals that see them as a panacea for rehabilitation or recovery, according to Taylor and Montford.
Some programs have become “media darlings,” they say, laundering an institution’s public image and “supporting its false claims to be a space of rehabilitation and thus potentially delaying its abolition.”
In some ways, animal programs can end up reinforcing, or at least ignoring, oppressive structures of incarceration with insufficient concern for the animals in their service. As such, Animals and the Prison Industrial Complex is as much a critique of prisons themselves as it is an examination of programs contained within their walls.
The authors rely on two critical frameworks drawn from prison activism and critical prison studies: prison abolitionism and animal liberation. Beyond the eradication of “the concrete and metal structures that are prisons,” abolition is an “aspirational concept” that makes room for the true reform found in more progressive models such as restorative justice.
“Prison abolition aspires to a world in which justice is not equated with punishment or retribution, in which we would address the root causes of injustice rather than inflict harm on individual wrongdoers, their families, and their communities,” write Taylor and Montford.
Relationships with animals can be either a reflection and replication of colonial violence, or, with the right approach, a space for transformation, growth and emancipation.
Incarcerated people have long had close relationships with animals, befriending wild or feral animals on prison grounds. The most famous example is Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz,” who cared for injured sparrows and canaries at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in 1920. Stroud eventually wrote Diseases of Canaries and became a respected ornithologist.
One promising 1970s study at Ohio’s Oakwoods Forensic Centre— a hospital for the criminally insane — allowed some patients to keep small pets such as hamsters, birds and fish, resulting in lower rates of suicide. Structured programs followed in the 1980s, with their popularity surging in the early 2000s, partly driven by media coverage and documentaries, such as the 2004 reality television series Cell Dogs.
Wild horse programs expanded through the 2000s, which involved taming wild mustangs for adoption or use by government agencies like the Border Patrol. Although historically rare, cat programs have grown in popularity recently, with 25 identified by 2019. Many involve feral cats living on prison grounds. There are now programs involving beekeeping, frog and butterfly conservation, and native plant restoration.
But as successful as they have proven, many programs have prioritized the welfare of humans over animals in their care, as does the scholarship assessing their value, say Taylor and Montford.
“The existing literature on prison animal programs sees them as a form of institutional reform that rehabilitates humans and pays little to no critical attention to the experiences of more-than-human animals.”
Animal programs can also replicate the prison’s disciplinary power, requiring inmates to conform to strict rules using animals to reinforce control and docility. Some dog programs, for example, use aversive training methods with prong collars and correction techniques. Horses can experience trauma from capture, captivity and domestication, and cats can be subjected to extreme confinement, tethered in small prison cells for years.
The authors argue that many of the benefits of animal programs are negated by the harms of incarceration itself. In contrast, programs outside the prison environment could avoid these traps through community-based, animal-care initiatives or shelters where criminalized or marginalized people work. They include partnerships with Pets for Life, run by the Humane Society, or wild horse initiatives that protect already wild herds from ranchers, helping to restore grassland habitats.
The benefits of caring for animals cannot be ignored, they say. But glowing reports must be accompanied by academic and media accounts “more critical of the overwhelming violence and futility of the institutions in which (the programs) take place … developed within truly transformative justice projects instead.”
Animals and the Prison Industrial Complex is due for release next summer.