After reading about the British mob (below), consider this:

Two-year-old Noah Newbold of Hunter Valley, Australia (two hours north of Sydney), is lucky to have sight in his left eye after being mauled by his family's mastiff-staffordshire cross. But his mother is keeping the dog because the near-blinding of her son was pure justice, as she sees it. He was pulling the dog's tail, she says. There were no witnesses. (Click here to read the article.)

Now, a "mastiff-staffordshire cross" is a polite way of saying "an uber pit bull." It is a pit bull made bigger and more dangerous by crossing a mastiff and a staffordshire-type pit bull. That is her dog.

If reading this is making you start to talk like John, Paul, George and Ringo, and feel like joining a British mob, check out the next part of the story:

Police said no charges would be filed for the attack because "it occurred at the owner's home." Like child-beating, sexual molestation and criminal endangerment, a senseless and brutal attack by a vicious, uber pit bull upon a toddler can indeed take place in the home. The location of the incident, however, should not be off-limits for child protective services and the criminal justice system.

Only several years ago, South Australia considered enacting a law that would put both parents in jail whenever their child was bitten by a dog. I do not know whether that proposal became law, but I mention it because it shows that some authorities in that country seem to know better than the Hunter Valley police.

A pack of dogs belonging to Ruben Deanda mauled Lew Yallup last week as he picked up cans on Campbell road in Wapato, Washington. The victim nearly lost a leg, and the dog owner has been charged with four counts of owning a dog that caused serious injury.

Deanda faces up to 4 years in jail and fines of up to $20,000. Additionally, he is liable for all of Yallup's medical bills, pain and suffering, and loss of earning potential as a result of disability. (Click here to read the article.)

This accident reflected one of the predictors given on the Dog Bite Danger Scale, namely the pack mentality. 3 dogs are worse than 2, 4 are worse than 3, etc. It is well established that docile dogs often become uncharacteristically violent and vicious when they are in a pack. (Click here to read about the scale on Dog Bite Law.)

In Memphis, Tennessee, law enforcement officials have decided to do nothing about a five-year-old boy who was horribly injured after being attacked and dragged down the street by a pit bull. The dog had jumped over or squeezed past its owner's inadequate fence. (To see the fence and the video of the TV news story, click here.)

Rather than prosecute the dog owner, authorities responded by giving the press misleading information which was repeated without scrutiny. The truth of the matter is that City of Memphis Ordinance § 5-60 makes it illegal for dog owners to allow dogs to be loose on the property of the dog owners unless the dogs are confined by a fence.

If the authorities so choose, they are entitled to prosecute this dog owner and all others whose dogs get loose because of inadequate fences. Any dog can squeeze through the gap in the fence shown in the TV news footage, linked above. Pit bulls can scale fences that are six to eight feet high, a fact that is well known to pit bull owners, evidenced by the high number of Internet posts about such instances. So this incident should result in a prosecution if authorities are interested in keeping the streets of Memphis safe.

Switching to the big picture, it is unacceptable for law enforcement authorities to shirk their duty to eliminate dangerous dogs. In 2007 Tennessee had the second highest number of dog attacks that resulted in the death of a human being. (Click here for more.) Most of the victims of dog maulings are children and elders. (Click here to download the 18-page article, and then refer to p. 1733.)

The brutality will not be curbed unless the authorities become more aggressive against the owners of vicious dogs.

On January 21, 2008, Rebecca Hirst, 18, was beaten by a screaming mob outside a nightclub in Wakefield, West Yorks, UK. Her attackers were screaming that she was responsible for the death of her 13-month-old son, Archie-Lee Hirst.

The infant was killed by his grandmother's Rottweiler on December 28, 2007. It was reported that Ms. Hirst had left her baby in the care of her 16-year-old sister, at an apartment where the Rottweiler lived. The dog grabbed the toddler not from the 16-year-old but from Ms. Hirst's other sister who was only 7 years of age.

Strange how the British get so upset about canine homicides. In the USA, we call these killings an "unfortunate accident" and announcements are quickly made that no charges will be filed against anyone. In the odd criminal prosecution, the conviction usually is for negligent homicide and the dog owner gets off with a year in jail. No public beatings here.

This is true even in cases like that of Jennifer Lowe, whose face was ripped off by a pit bull that local Tennessee authorities previously declared to be dangerous. Under county law, the owner of that dog thereafter was required to keep it confined or muzzled, but he repeatedly violated that obligation, resulting in Jennifer's horrific death in November 2007. Prosecutors were quick to announce, however, that they would not prosecute the dog owner even though he obviously broke the law.

To read the full story about Ms. Hirst, click here.

On Sunday, January 20, 2008, 24-year-old Kelli Chapman of Longville, Louisiana, was killed by the two pit bulls that belonged to her and her husband. Upon his return from work that night, he found her on the floor of their bedroom, where she had died of bite trauma and blood loss.

Louisiana has a dog bite statute that imposes strict liability provided that the victim proves negligence on the part of the dog owner. This is neither real strict liability nor the English one-bite rule. The lowest death toll from fatal dog attacks in 2007 was in the strict liability states.

Throughout the USA, dog owners are prosecuted for sometimes-serious crimes which were "carried out" by their dogs.

For example, last week Curtis Lester, Jr. of Onalaska, Washington, was convicted of one count of reckless endangerment and five counts of animals at large. The charges stemmed from a July 31, 2007, incident in which several of his dogs mauled a 21-month-old child, resulting in multiple bites and cuts. Sentencing is set for Feb. 4 at 3:30 p.m. in Lewis County District Court.

The courts and the public do not believe that in all cases dog attacks are simply unfortunate accidents. Owners have to be responsible in order to avoid civil and criminal liability.