Cruella de Vil is after neither money nor power: she wants a Dalmatian fur coat, and to get it she is willing to kidnap and skin ninety-nine puppies. Her villainy is pure vanity, and that is why it scandalizes. But green criminology adds an uncomfortable twist: much of what Cruella desires —killing animals for their skins— is, in the real world, a legal industry. Her case opens the thorniest branch of the theory: species justice.
// The theoryThe Victim Who Does Not Count
Green criminology distinguishes three forms of justice: environmental (harm to humans), ecological (to ecosystems), and species justice —harm to non-human animals—. The last, the most disputed, was developed by Piers Beirne with his non-speciesist criminology: the proposal to take animal suffering seriously as a real harm, not as a "minor" offense against the property of its owner. Because that is the key: for the law, for centuries, harming an animal was not doing something to it, but to its owner. The animal was not a victim; it was a thing.
Cruella throws light on that arbitrary boundary. We are horrified that she wants to skin puppies —because they are pets, because they are cute, because we have included them in the circle of what deserves protection—. But the very culture that condemns her kills millions of animals for fashion, food, or experimentation without calling it a crime. Green criminology does not necessarily demand that we treat a dog and a cow the same; it demands that we point out the incoherence: that we draw the line of "victim" according to species, usefulness, or cuteness, not according to the capacity to suffer. Cruella is a monster for doing to a Dalmatian what we do to other animals every day and with a license.
Animal Abuse as Real Harm
Species justice asks for a double recognition. First, moral: that an animal's suffering count as harm in itself, not as damage to someone's property. And second, practical: criminological research has shown that animal cruelty is a serious predictor of later violence against humans —many abusers and killers began by torturing animals—. Cruella, with her pleasure in the suffering of defenseless beings, fits that profile. Ignoring animal abuse is not just an ethical gap: it means missing an early warning sign that criminology has learned, belatedly, to read.
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// The subjectCruelty as a Status Symbol
What sets Cruella apart from a hunter or a rancher —who kill for money or food— is that she kills out of vanity: the coat is not a coat, it is status, a way of showing off that she can afford the most expensive and cruel whim. That is where she connects with the green critique of consumption: much of the harm to animals and the planet does not meet needs, but feeds social distinction —having what others cannot—. Cruella is the glamorous tip of that logic: the one who turns the suffering of other creatures into a fashion accessory. Her evil is not an excess foreign to our culture; it is our vanity taken to the limit, without the alibi of necessity we usually attach to it. It is what Thorstein Veblen called conspicuous consumption: spending not to have, but to be seen to be able to —and there is no more conspicuous waste than the one that costs a life.
Cruella de Vil
// The crackWhere Do We Draw the Line?
Species justice is the most controversial part of green criminology, and with reason: taken to the extreme, it blurs the boundary between humans and animals until almost any use of animals becomes "criminal," which clashes with entire cultures, diets, and economies. Is Cruella worse than the fur industry, or just more honest? Where do we cut it off —the dog yes, the mink no, the salmon neither—? The theory has no closed answer, and its critics fear that it may replace analysis with moral sermon. Its defensible contribution is not to impose a single line, but to force us to justify the one we draw, instead of taking it for granted as natural. Cruella unsettles us because she crosses our line; the theory asks why that one and not another.
Widening the Circle of the Victim
The Cruella case matters because the history of law is, in large part, the history of widening who counts as a victim —including groups that were once property or non-persons before the law—. Green criminology proposes taking one more step and asking seriously about animals: strengthening laws against abuse (not as a property offense, but as one of cruelty), treating animal cruelty as a danger signal, and examining the harm of entire industries with the same critical gaze we apply to other crimes of the powerful. You do not have to share every conclusion to accept the question Cruella poses: why she strikes us as a monster for doing, in plain sight, what we as a society do every day and in the dark.
Three key takeaways
- Species justice (Beirne, non-speciesist criminology) is the branch of green criminology that takes harm to animals seriously as harm in itself, not as damage to their owner's property.
- Cruella scandalizes by skinning puppies, but she exposes the incoherence: the same culture kills millions of animals for fashion or food without calling it a crime. We draw the line of "victim" arbitrarily.
- The crack: the branch is controversial (where do we cut it off?) and borders on sermon. Its value: forcing us to justify the line, and reminding us that animal cruelty predicts violence against humans.
Sources · further reading
- Beirne, P. (2009). Confronting Animal Abuse: Law, Criminology, and Human-Animal Relationships. Rowman & Littlefield.
- White, R. (2008). Crimes Against Nature. Willan.
- Ascione, F. R. (2001). «Animal Abuse and Youth Violence». OJJDP Juvenile Justice Bulletin.
- Sollund, R. (2019). The Crimes of Wildlife Trafficking. Routledge.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es Cruella de Vil?
Cruella de Vil («Cruella») es un villano de 101 dálmatas, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. Cruella de Vil wants neither money nor power: she wants a Dalmatian fur coat, and to get it she is willing to kidnap and skin ninety-nine puppies.
¿Por qué Cruella de Vil se convierte en villano?
101 Dalmatians and green criminology: Cruella de Vil wants to skin puppies to make herself a coat, and the law barely touches her. Her cruelty puts the most uncomfortable branch of the theory on the table —species justice— along with a simple question: why is harming an animal almost never "a real crime"?
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Cruella de Vil?
El caso de Cruella de Vil se analiza desde la Criminología verde. Green criminology is not only about ecosystems: it includes species justice, the branch that takes harm to non-human animals seriously (Beirne and his "non-speciesist" criminology). Cruella de Vil, who wants to skin puppies out of vanity, is its pop icon: she embodies animal cruelty as a status whim, and at the same time exposes the incoherence of a law that harshly punishes killing a dog for pleasure but tolerates, as an industry, killing millions for fashion or food. Her villainy reveals where we draw —arbitrarily— the boundary of the victim.
