GILLIAN LUCKY

It is a down­right shame that al­most 11 years af­ter its pas­sage in Par­lia­ment, the Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act (here­inafter re­ferred to as the Act) has nev­er been pro­claimed and im­ple­ment­ed as law. One could un­der­stand the leg­isla­tive lethar­gy if the prob­lem of at­tacks by dogs deemed dan­ger­ous had abat­ed but the sit­u­a­tion is quite the con­verse. Since the Act was as­sent­ed to and ap­par­ent­ly left to col­lect dust on the shelves, there have been re­ports of vi­cious at­tacks by dogs, es­pe­cial­ly pit bulls and with­in re­cent time grue­some deaths have re­sult­ed from these an­i­mals lit­er­al­ly prov­ing their killer in­stincts. It is un­for­tu­nate that it took deaths of in­no­cent peo­ple and the near fa­tal­i­ties of oth­ers who were the sub­ject of dog at­tacks to wake the sleep­ing gi­ants to ad­dress the mat­ter of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the leg­is­la­tion. And let this not be in­ter­pret­ed as an in­dict­ment against this re-gime be­cause noth­ing pre­vent­ed the last gov­ern­ment from re­view­ing and re­vis­ing leg­is­la­tion, such as this Act, which al­though as­sent­ed to was not im­ple­ment­ed.

Tak­ing a re­vis­it

In the par­tic­u­lar in­stance of the re­cent pit bull at­tacks, the Prime Min­is­ter has act­ed with ra­pid­i­ty and di­rect­ed the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to put his eyes on the leg­is­la­tion with a view to its im­ple­men­ta­tion. This will be no easy task for ob­vi­ous­ly there are chal­lenges and per­haps even flaws in the ex­ist­ing Act, which may mean the in­tro­duc­tion of new leg­is­la­tion. The AG cur­rent­ly has his hands full so it is ex­pect­ed that the rel­e­vant de­part­ments, com­mis­sions and com­mit­tees with­in his min­istry, as well as in­de­pen­dent law bod­ies, will play an ac­tive role in en­sur­ing that we get the leg­is­la­tion right. With­out dar­ing to ad­vise the AG as to the ap­proach he should adopt in this mat­ter which con­tin­ues to be the sub­ject of ur­gent, na­tion­al im­por­tance, re­sort should be had, in the first in­stance, to the Hansard record of the de­bate. In May 2000, the AG at that time, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, took pains as he pi­lot­ed the bill to ex­plain its con­tro­ver­sial his­to­ry and the fact that sev­er­al months be­fore, when de­bat­ed in its ear­li­er form, var­i­ous mat­ters were con­sid­ered be­fore bring­ing the amend­ed leg­is­la­tion to the Par­lia­ment. The de­bate was lengthy but in­struc­tive as the gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion at the time sought to ad­dress and re­solve the con­cerns raised by sec­tors of the so­ci­ety who held op­pos­ing po­si­tions. It is in­ter­est­ing that the is­sues that were per­ti­nent then re­main rel­e­vant now and so, thank­ful­ly, it is not a case of start­ing from scratch. In any event this AG has proven him­self a hard work­er who is per­for­mance dri­ven and even as I write, I an­tic­i­pate that a com­mit­tee will be es­tab­lished with the spe­cif­ic man­date to ad­vise the AG as to the best way for­ward.

Ban or reg­u­late

A ma­jor is­sue of de­bate has al­ways been whether dan­ger­ous dogs as de­fined in the Act should be banned in this coun­try or their own­er­ship made part of a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work which in­cludes li­cens­ing and con­trol. Those who ad­vo­cate an out­right ban be­lieve that dan­ger­ous dogs pose a live and con­tin­u­ing threat to in­no­cent peo­ple and that re­spon­si­ble own­er­ship is a con­cept that will be ap­pre­ci­at­ed by few and prac­tised by lit­tle. On the oth­er hand, those in favour of reg­u­la­tion main­tain that dan­ger­ous dogs can be con­trolled and the fo­cus should be on en­cour­ag­ing re­spon­si­ble own­er­ship. The Act in its cur­rent form, by virtue of sec­tion five, pro­vides for the neu­ter­ing and pro­hi­bi­tion of breed­ing of dan­ger­ous dogs. There are sec­tions in the Act that pro­vide for the reg­is­tra­tion and li­cens­ing of dan­ger­ous dogs so that there is not a to­tal ban but rather a clear in­ten­tion that own­ers of dogs de­fined as dan­ger­ous in the Act, in­clud­ing pit bull ter­ri­ers and any dog bred from the pit bull ter­ri­er, would be sub­ject to strict reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments as sat­ed in the leg­is­la­tion. This was the ap­proach tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment back then to pre­vent own­ers of dan­ger­ous dogs from the or­deal of hav­ing to hand over their dogs to the State to be put away per­ma­nent­ly. It was a means of com­pro­mise and there­fore one has to con­sid­er whether, in light of the re­cent hor­rif­ic deaths, a dra­con­ian ap­proach is pre­ferred.

Much more in Act

The scope of this ar­ti­cle does not al­low a de­tailed dis­cus­sion on the main pro­vi­sions of the Act but men­tion must be made of the fear that, once im­ple­ment­ed, own­ers of dan­ger­ous dogs un­able to com­ply with the strict re­quire­ments of own­er­ship as pre­scribed in the Act might opt to let their dogs loose, there­by cre­at­ing fur­ther hav­oc. Al­though there is a spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sion crim­i­nal­is­ing such ac­tion, it would be dif­fi­cult to mon­i­tor the ac­tions of such own­ers, es­pe­cial­ly with no sys­tem of reg­is­tra­tion in place.

Then there is the mat­ter of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of of­fences con­tained in the Act and the prac­ti­cal prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with keep­ing live ex­hibits, in this case dan­ger­ous dogs. The Act is mod­elled af­ter the Dan­ger­ous Dogs Act 1991 UK and in that ju­ris­dic­tion there were amend­ments to the law and the is­suance of sev­er­al cir­cu­lars from the Home Of­fice in or­der to im­ple­ment the law and cor­rect de­fi­cien­cies in the leg­is­la­tion. The job of im­ple­men­ta­tion calls for an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the en­tire process from own­er­ship to suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of the mat­ters and the time­line for rec­ti­fi­ca­tion is un­der­stand­ably short.

Step in time

It seems that we al­ways suf­fer the ad­verse reper­cus­sions of act­ing too late or sit­ting idly by while dis­as­ters strike. To date many in­no­cent lives have been lost as a re­sult of at­tacks by dogs and such deaths could have been pre­vent­ed if prop­er cau­tion had been tak­en. There are in­stances in which warn­ings about dan­ger­ous be­hav­iour by dogs were ig­nored by their own­ers and these dogs even­tu­al­ly killed, maimed or in­jured vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple. The sit­u­a­tion is out of con­trol and has evoked the strongest out­cry from those who al­ready feel in­se­cure and un­safe in our high-crime en­vi­ron­ment. We have al­ready shown the in­abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly deal with se­ri­ous crim­i­nals, let us hope that our fate is not the same with killer dogs.