A group of legal and animal control experts are planning to discuss potential revisions to animal cruelty laws at a Friday panel hosted by the University Law School.
To organize Friday’s event the University’s Animal Law Program, which supports legal and scholarly research about animal abuse, , teamed up with the Virginia Animal Law Society.
The panel will include Assistant Attorney General Michelle Welch and Robert C. Leinberger Jr., the current vice president for the Virginia Animal Control Association. In addition, Clifton P. Flynn, chair of the Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice and Women’s Studies at the University of South Carolina Upstate, will discuss the relationship between animal abuse and human violence.
“There is growing evidence for the connection between animal abuse and several forms of violence against people,” Flynn said in an email.