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Animal Fighting 353 perceptions of this type of dog, resulting in an increasing number of temperamentally and physically ‘unsound’10 dogs (Hughes et al 2011) Explaining Involvement and Harm in Dog Fighting: The Sub-culture of Dogmen and Neutralisation Contemporary dog fighting, as previously noted, can be professional, informal or cultural in nature, operating at the street level or internationally across highly secretive networks (Boucher 2011) What unites all types of dog fighters is the cultural norms of masculinity and status commonplace in what is a heavily male-dominated sport; women are usually only ever recorded as spectators Consequently, this section explains the involvement of offenders through a subcultural lens (Cohen 1955) and the related harms through neutralisation theory (Sykes and Matza 1957) With scarce testimony from within the dog fighting fraternity (in particular, culturally motivated dog fighters), little is known about the values systems employed which help explain their involvement in the associated criminal and violent behaviour, accordingly Clure and Lum (2011) rightly argue more research is needed to expand on these theories Subcultural theories (Cohen 1955; Wolfgang and Ferracuti’s 1967), originally referring to urban working class youth, argue that offenders create an oppositional (sub)culture in reaction to social inequality and exclusion, facilitating shared antisocial values and behaviours Evans and Forsyth (1998) note a loyalty hierarchy among dogmen, whereby attachments to their dog fighting fraternity eclipse all allegiances to wider society, with the subcultural values of this smaller group underpinned by a system of rationalisation and neutralisation (discussed further below) In the UK, at least, dog fighting is deemed to be within only the lower social classes, as explained by the front line investigator (Lawson forthcoming): [Dog fighting] doesn’t relate to professional, well educated people involved in it, and the reason for specifying that is that we actually see that in other cruel sports, cock-fighting for instance, that does go right across the strata of society—traveller community, farming community, titled gentry even, are 10 The pit bull’s once-revered characteristics of loyalty and tenacity have been manipulated, through breeding, by those looking for large and aggressive dogs to ruthlessly defend their homes or make them rich by fighting to the death in dog fighting matches
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