To think it was ridiculous to prosecute Mary Bale aka the cat-in the bin woman?

[mrsruffallo]

What a waste of time. Honestly, look at the world around you and get some perspective!

i object more to the furore and publicity, what she did was off, but it in no way merits the airtime

You might have a point there. But Lola was so appealing and journalists are human.

YANBU

Oh yes the public furore was ridiculous but that doesn't detract from the fact the act itself needing punishing.

Glad she was prosecuted!

Glad it got media coverage,- sends an up-to- date reminder to people that animal cruelty is shit!

She chucked that poor cat in a bin like apiece of rubbish without a thought for the consequence. £250? She got off extremely lightly.

I do agree that I found it very hard to work out how all the people calling for her death were any better than her though. very strange, I put it down to that mass hysteria syndrome personally.

It's really easy to say "She did a horrible thing, she should go to jail! She should suffer! She should hang!" or whatever other revenge you wish on her.

Yes, it's a cruel action, yes, it probably is sociopathic.

But why did she do it? I think that's a really important question. Why did she have the impulse to do it and why did she follow through?

Surely both things point to a mental illness. So is punishment and revenge really the way to go?

Yes carmen. But IMO the why is always as important as the punishment. But a message needs to be sent I guess that it is a not acceptable.

Argh!!!!!!!!!!!!

She did something cruel and bad so she must be mentally ill? Why do people have to associate any horrible act with mental illness?

She did something bad because she is not a nice person is a perfectly normal and reasonable explanation you know! People ("normal" people not "mental" people) do bad things too!

Ok, let's assume a 'normal' person to use your terminology does this. One day puts a cat in a bin.

Why?

What is the thought process?

Is punishment actually going to stop her doing it again? (More than working through why she did it?)

Is punishment actually going to stop anyone else who might be thinking of doing this? Is anyone else actually thinking of doing this?

Also, the world is really not divided into 'normal' and 'mental' people.

YABU. There was no alternative but to prosecute as there was sufficent evidence. If deliberate cruelty is not punished then it puts out a very poor message.

Let the courts decide whether it was cruelty - that is what they are there for. If it was determined that she wasn't being cruel then she would have been found innocent. We can't have a situation where the internet decides whether something warrants prosecution

Look.....She was prosecuted because the red top media demanded it. If she had just been reported to the police, without the intervention of the media, she would have been given at most a warning or a fixed penalty fine.

But the papers got hold of it and turned it into a witch hunt. The Daily Fail demanded her blood. People with nothing better to do on Facebook formed a group and campaigned hard. Honestly it was horrible!! It was a crime!! I mean let's face it, it's not like she was doing something perf3ectly reasonable and not worth the court time like...for example...raping women perhaps?

Carmen, i am well aware of how the world is divided. What I hate is this theory that anyone who does anything "bad" must have some kind of mental illness. It is such rubbish. By that theory that would mean that everyone who ever kicked a dog or threw a stone at a cat was suffering from mental illness which is patently not true, they are not suffering from a mental illness they are just people who do bad things. Humanity goes through all sorts of variations, just because someone is capable of doing bad things it does not follow that they have mental illness, it is the biggest and most insulting cop out available.

Slug - that is not correct. The RSPCA prosecuted her. They are the most usual prosecuting body for animal welfare offences. They do not have the options to issue a caution or a fine. They either prosecute or they don't.

Occasionally the police might investigate animal cruelty offences (for example if they came across such an offence in the course of investigating other matters, or if the offence took place in front of an officer) and have them prosecuted by the CPS. A caution might be available in certain circumstances (but would involve the offender fully admitting the offence in police interview) but a fixed penalty fine certainly would not be. I have never seen animal cruelty be the subject of a caution - it generally goes to court.

The media frenzy about this has not led to any injustice, or to the case being treated more seriously than it deserves. The case came to the attention of the prosecuting authority via the media, but could just as easily have come to their attention by someone seeing her doing it and identifying her to the RSPCA. £250 is a relatively low level fine - the maximum fine is £20,000. It is about the same as the fines issued to first or second time shoplifters or low level drink drivers. So I don't think she did too badly really.

Bella, you still don't answer WHY people do bad things.

I don't think a person who is completely sane and in control sees a cat and puts it in a bin. It's not a rational action.

I agree with you for the most part carmen, but there do seem to be quite a few people on MN who express venom and violent feelings towards cats and dogs. Are they suffering from MH problems? Or just angry or scared of them?

WTF? People do bad things because they are people and people do bad things! No-one is ever 100% rational 100% of the time. People have diffrent moral compasses, some people really do not think there is anything wrong with kicking a dog or whatever. It is simply to do with the moral values they have or have been bought up with not mental illness.

"Normal" people do bad things. Live with it!

That's a little different, Gore.

Someone who kicks dogs regularly, say, may well not be ill. Just someone who doesn't like dogs and who has a different moral standard to the rest of the country. (And an unacceptable moral standard, so some sort of deterrent is needed to make sure that person conforms to the societal norms).

From what I've seen (and I'm just going by the media), she was stroking the cat then decided to put it in the bin on impulse. She said it was out of character and her family said she loves cats.

Carmen - people who are sane and "normal" do stupid things, dishonest things, violent things, cruel things, destructive things, the list goes on.
I deal with people who do these things on a daily basis. Some of them have diagnosed mental illnesses, some of them clearly have undiagnosed difficulties, some are stressed or finding life very difficult for various reasons. And some have absolutely no explanation for doing what they did, or did something simply because they thought it would be funny, or because there was a personal benefit to doing it.

Perhaps she just thought it would be funny. Perhaps she was having a bad day and the idea of making it a bad day for the cat appealed to her. Perhaps she is a nasty person who gets a kick out of doing cruel things. Such people exist.

I agree with Bella - it is unhelpful to excuse all unpleasant, irrational actions with the assumption that there must be mental health problems involved. There is an unfortunate trend in the youth courts at the moment for the parents of almost every young offender to claim that their child's actions are down to ADHD. Some young offenders have ADHD - the majority of them do not. It makes it very difficult to represent those who genuinely have ADHD/mental health problems if there is an assumption that all offenders have ADHD/mental health problems. It also makes it difficult for law abiding people with ADHD or mental health problems if their condition is perpetually attached to criminal activities.

Carmen - if I was representing her in court, you can be damn sure she would be saying how much she loves cats, and that there would be letters from family members supporting this.

Kungfu, in the video I saw, she stroked the cat before dumping it. That's weird behaviour. If she hated cats, she'd just dump it.

Moving on from the cat thing though...
I understand your point that everyone can claim mental illness. But at the same time, I think there is some truth in it. I think people do tend to do bad things because they have never learned otherwise. If someone has a shit upbringing then acts in the only way they know then is punished again for acting that way, is that really right?

If someone does something dishonest, cruel or otherwise wrong for personal gain, then that is rational and easy to punish. If someone does something and can't explain why or because they are under stress, then I think there should be much more leeway, more focus on rehabilitation and understanding.

But I am a bleeding heart at odds with a society which demands justice at any cost.

I feel the same way. Retribution is unacceptable. But I objected to the posters who seem to imply that because it's only a cat it isn't important. I also don't think that a fine of 250 isn't severe at all.

Punishment serves three purposes I can see.

To deter the person from doing the act again
To deter other people from doing it
To please other people's sense of justice.

1. I think there are better ways of deterring her from doing it again. Therapy and rehabilitation included.

1. I doubt anyone else would do this. It's a newsworthy event because it's so unusual. Although ironically, the media have made it more likely that it will be copycatted.

Therefore, I think she's being punished mostly for the third reason which imo is fairly bogus and is just about appeasing the public's sense of moral superiority.