The Need for a Canine Innocence Project

In January, The Colbert Report aired a piece on the death penalty’s decline. Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to reforming the criminal justice system, explained the importance of using DNA evidence to exonerate wrongly accused inmates. Thanks to breed specific legislation, we now need a Canine Innocence Project to exonerate dogs on death row.

These dogs are being convicted for crimes that were never committed, based on no more evidence than an untrained opinion on their appearance. However, in some courts, the CSI effect of doggy DNA is already having an impact and saving lives.

In 2008, a Kansas dog named Niko was seized under a municipal breed-discriminatory ordinance. Niko spent nine months incarcerated at the city’s animal control facility, simply because of his appearance. He looked like a “pit bull.” Niko’s owners demanded a DNA test. The test revealed that Niko had no predominant breed and he was returned to his owners.

Unfortunately, Niko’s initial experience of being locked up based on visual misidentification is not an isolated case, nor is it a surprise. It’s actually all too common.

According to Dr. Victoria Voith, visual identification, even by professionals, is often wrong. In a recent study, Dr. Voith found that, in 87.5 percent of adopted dogs, breeds identified by DNA analyses were not the breeds stated by the adoption agencies. Animal shelter workers were right in guessing the heritage of a mixed-breed dog only 12.5 percent of the time. Because of the inaccuracy of visual breed identification, Voith rightly questioned current public and private policies based on dog breeds.

If a city outlaws a “breed,” they have the burden of proving that a dog is of that heritage. Now, with DNA testing, it's possible, but expensive. The cost of DNA testing ranges from $125-$160 per dog.

Economics matter to politicians and taxpayers, especially in the current economy. Best Friends Animal Society wanted to find out what the real costs of enacting a breed-discriminatory law were, so it hired economist John Dunham to find out. Dunham and Associates created an economic model (pdf) that anyone can click on and calculate what it would cost for their city to target “pit bulls.” As the calculator demonstrates, enforcing breed-discriminatory policies is quite expensive. According to the model, if the United States were to enact a nationwide breed-discriminatory law, it would cost approximately $459,138,163 to enforce annually.

It’s been a year since the Fiscal Impact of Breed Discriminatory Law Calculator has been online. Since that time, more than 50 cities and counties have decided against a breed specific legislation targeting pit bulls; only 14 have decided to engage in canine profiling. By using creative economic tools to lobby for animals, lives can be saved. Even politicians who don’t care about animal issues usually care about tax dollars.

Check out what it would cost your city or county if they decided to enact a breed-discriminatory law. Then, share the reports with your officials, before innocent dogs are targeted. Between creative tools like this calculator, and the proof of DNA testing, we can help get dogs off death row.

Photo Credit: Lynn Terry