The Utah legislature is currently considering two bills that concern animal cruelty. These two bills (SB 102 and SB 117) address the severity of punishment for people who are convicted of animal cruelty. SB 102 makes a first offense of animal torture a felony, while SB 117 waits until the second offense within a five-year span to become a felony. I am certain that an argument could be made for both bills, but that is not my purpose today. My slant is simply this: The stiffer the penalty, the more compliance we will see with the law. In other words, if the penalty for committing a certain crime is high, the incidence of that crime will be low.

I think when you consider all things, you will come to the same conclusion. However, the penalty has to be high enough to be a deterrent. Now, this does not always work, and there are some crimes wherein the penalty is very high and yet people continue to commit them. But I am speaking in generalities. If the penalty for graffiti, for example, was a mandatory 10 years in prison with no opportunity for parole, I'd be willing to wager that the incidence of graffiti would plummet. The reward of having your "artwork" on the side of someone else's building would simply not be worth the risk of 10 years in the clink.

I read a report a few years back wherein a county in another state enacted a new policy that basically said this: If an unsterilized (not spayed or neutered) animal is picked up running at large without identification (dog license or microchip), then the fee to reclaim the animal is $500. This county had had enough with people allowing their pets to run loose with no meaningful repercussions to the pet owners, so it dramatically increased the penalty. The result was, in the first 11 days of implementing the new policy, dog licensing increased by 411 percent. In other words, the penalty was stiff enough to encourage compliance.

Recently here in Utah, there have been several extraordinary incidents of animal cruelty -- two separate occasions within the last week or so of dogs being injured. I think that is both alarming and revealing. Alarming that someone would be so reckless and cruel, and revealing because we learn that just maybe the punishment for committing such an act was not great enough to act as a deterrent. It is further alarming when you learn that people who abuse animals often become people who abuse other people. Increasing the penalty for animal torture and cruelty can only help perpetuate getting violent people off the streets before their violence turns to other humans.

I am, of course, in favor of increasing the penalty for people who are convicted of animal torture and abuse here in Utah. I think there are other variables to consider, which I have not discussed. But the bottom line is that if we increase the penalty, we are likely to increase compliance. In my opinion, the fewer the people out there torturing animals, the better.

My encouragement is for everyone who is concerned about this issue to speak up. As the saying goes, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

• Tug Gettling is the director of North Utah Valley Animal Services.