Why there's a $1 fee

Animal cruelty is a felony in all fifty states. Since 2019, the federal PACT Act has made extreme cruelty a federal felony carrying up to seven years in prison.

So the laws exist. What doesn't exist is a place to look someone up.

What the FBI actually tracks

In 2016, the FBI began counting animal cruelty as its own offense in the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) — the national database where law-enforcement agencies report the crimes they investigate. Animal cruelty is recorded there as a crime against society, alongside offenses the FBI considers harmful to the community as a whole. For the first time, it became countable nationally.

Here is what agencies reported in 2023:

• 22,418 animal-cruelty incidents nationwide
• 13,726 were simple or gross neglect
• 5,995 were intentional abuse and torture
• 309 were animal sexual abuse
• 222 were organized abuse — dogfighting and cockfighting rings
• 406 of those incidents happened here in Louisiana

And those are only the cases reported by participating agencies. The true number is higher.

Here's the gap

NIBRS counts incidents. It does not name people — the data is stripped of identities before it is ever published.

So when a shelter, a rescue, a breeder, or a veterinary clinic is about to place an animal, there is still nowhere to look. No shared record. No way to know whether the person across the counter has done this before.

That is the gap petOffenders exists to close.

Your $1 keeps this registry running, maintained, and growing. It also discourages false or retaliatory reports, and it pays for the human review behind every entry.

What it means for the next animal

Every verified report makes the next search a little more complete. Somewhere down the line, a rescue runs a name, sees what you saw, and an animal doesn't go home with the wrong person.

That's the whole idea. One dollar. One report. One less chance for someone to do this again.

What happens next

You'll return to petOffenders to finish submitting. A reviewer reads your report, typically within 48 hours. Your identity is never shown publicly.

Givebutter powers our donations without charging us a platform fee — they're supported by the optional tip at checkout. It's entirely your choice, and setting it to $0 won't affect your report.

petOffenders — Report Filing