Understanding Torture

Understanding Torture PDF Author: John Parry
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472021788
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
"John Parry's Understanding Torture is an important contribution to our understanding of how torture fits within the practices and beliefs of the modern state. His juxtaposition of the often indeterminate nature of the law of torture with the very specific state practices of torture is both startling and revealing." ---Paul W. Kahn is Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities at Yale Law School and author of Sacred Violence "Parry is effective in building, deploying, and supporting his argument . . . that the law does not provide effective protections against torture, but also that the law is in itself constitutive of a political order in which torture is employed to create---and to destroy or re-create---political identities.” ---Margaret Satterthwaite, Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and Associate Professor of Clinical Law, NYU School of Law "A beautifully crafted, convincingly argued book that does not shy away from addressing the legal and ethical complexities of torture in the modern world. In a field that all too often produces simple or superficial responses to what has become an increasingly challenging issue, Understanding Torture stands out as a sophisticated and intellectually responsible work." ---Ruth Miller, Associate Professor of History, University of Massachusetts, Boston Prohibiting torture will not end it. In Understanding Torture, John T. Parry explains that torture is already a normal part of the state coercive apparatus. Torture is about dominating the victim for a variety of purposes, including public order; control of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities; and--- critically---domination for the sake of domination. Seen in this way, Abu Ghraib sits on a continuum with contemporary police violence in U.S. cities; violent repression of racial minorities throughout U.S. history; and the exercise of power in a variety of political, social, and interpersonal contacts. Creating a separate category for an intentionally narrow set of practices labeled and banned as torture, Parry argues, serves to normalize and legitimate the remaining practices that are "not torture." Consequently, we must question the hope that law can play an important role in regulating state violence. No one who reads this book can fail to understand the centrality of torture in modern law, politics, and governance. John T. Parry is Professor of Law at Lewis & Clark Law School.

Understanding Torture

Understanding Torture PDF Author: John Parry
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472021788
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Get Book Here

Book Description
"John Parry's Understanding Torture is an important contribution to our understanding of how torture fits within the practices and beliefs of the modern state. His juxtaposition of the often indeterminate nature of the law of torture with the very specific state practices of torture is both startling and revealing." ---Paul W. Kahn is Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities at Yale Law School and author of Sacred Violence "Parry is effective in building, deploying, and supporting his argument . . . that the law does not provide effective protections against torture, but also that the law is in itself constitutive of a political order in which torture is employed to create---and to destroy or re-create---political identities.” ---Margaret Satterthwaite, Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and Associate Professor of Clinical Law, NYU School of Law "A beautifully crafted, convincingly argued book that does not shy away from addressing the legal and ethical complexities of torture in the modern world. In a field that all too often produces simple or superficial responses to what has become an increasingly challenging issue, Understanding Torture stands out as a sophisticated and intellectually responsible work." ---Ruth Miller, Associate Professor of History, University of Massachusetts, Boston Prohibiting torture will not end it. In Understanding Torture, John T. Parry explains that torture is already a normal part of the state coercive apparatus. Torture is about dominating the victim for a variety of purposes, including public order; control of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities; and--- critically---domination for the sake of domination. Seen in this way, Abu Ghraib sits on a continuum with contemporary police violence in U.S. cities; violent repression of racial minorities throughout U.S. history; and the exercise of power in a variety of political, social, and interpersonal contacts. Creating a separate category for an intentionally narrow set of practices labeled and banned as torture, Parry argues, serves to normalize and legitimate the remaining practices that are "not torture." Consequently, we must question the hope that law can play an important role in regulating state violence. No one who reads this book can fail to understand the centrality of torture in modern law, politics, and governance. John T. Parry is Professor of Law at Lewis & Clark Law School.

Understanding Torture

Understanding Torture PDF Author: J. Jeremy Wisnewski
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748643303
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Despite Victor Hugo's 19th-century proclamation that torture no longer exists, we still find it even now, even in those nations that claim to be paradigms of civility. Why is it that torture still exists in a world where it is routinely regarded as immoral? Is it possible to eliminate torture, and if so, how? What exactly does it mean to call something 'torture', and is it always morally reprehensible? Arguments in favour of torture abound, but in this important new book, J. Jeremy Wisnewski examines and explains the moral dimensions of this perennial practice, paying careful attention to what lessons torture can teach us about our own moral psychology. By systematically exposing the weaknesses of the dominant arguments for torture, drawing on resources in both analytic and continental philosophy and relevant empirical literature in psychology, Wisnewski aims to provide an over-arching account of torture: what it is, why it's wrong, and why even the most civilized people can nevertheless engage in it.

Torture and Its Definition in International Law

Torture and Its Definition in International Law PDF Author: Metin Baolu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199374627
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 571

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Book Description
This book presents an interdisciplinary approach to definition of torture by a group of prominent scholars of behavioral sciences, international law, human rights, and public health. It represents a first ever attempt to compare behavioral science and international law perspectives on definitional issues and promote a sound theory- and evidence-based understanding of torture.

Torture and Its Definition In International Law

Torture and Its Definition In International Law PDF Author: Professor Metin Basoğlu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199374635
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 571

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Book Description
This book presents an interdisciplinary approach to definition of torture by bringing together behavioral science and international law perspectives on torture. It is a collaborative effort by a group of prominent scholars of behavioral sciences, international law, human rights, and public health with internationally recognized expertise and authority in their field. It represents a first ever attempt to explore the scientific basis of legal understanding of torture and inform international law on various definitional issues by proposing a sound theory- and empirical-evidence-based psychological formulation of torture. Drawing on scientific evidence from the editor's 30 years of systematic research on torture, it proposes a learning theory formulation of torture based on the concept of helplessness under the control of others and offers an assessment methodology that can reduce the element of subjectivity in legal judgments in individual cases. It also demonstrates how this formulation can help understand the nature and severity of ill-treatments in different contexts, such as domestic violence and adverse conditions of penal confinement. Through a learning theory analysis of "enhanced interrogation techniques," it demonstrates not only why these techniques constitute torture but also how they help us understand the contextual defining characteristic of torture in general. The proposed formulation implies a broader concept of torture than previously understood, provides scientific and moral justification for the evolving trends in international law towards a broader coverage of ill-treatments in contexts beyond official custody and points to new directions of expansion of the concept. With a focus on the concepts of shame and humiliation and their evolutionary origin, the book explains why inhuman or degrading treatments can cause as much pain or suffering as physical torture. Although treatment issues are not covered, the book sheds light on potentially effective treatment approaches by offering important insights into psychology of torture.

Survivors of Torture

Survivors of Torture PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Legal assistance to refugees
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description


Torture and Enhanced Interrogation

Torture and Enhanced Interrogation PDF Author: Christina Ann-Marie DiEdoardo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440862281
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
A comprehensive look at torture, this book examines societal understanding of its use, how we got here, and how it might be regarded in the future. Torture and Enhanced Interrogation: A Reference Handbook begins with an overview of the history of torture, beginning in Ancient Greece and continuing to Guantanamo Bay and beyond. After grounding the reader in the historical fundamentals, the work goes on to examine the key controversies that surround the use of torture, including but not limited to whether it should be used at all as an aid to interrogation or to procure testimony. Then, the book presents the views of several outside contributors with personal experience or special expertise in the area. The book achieves a balance of profiles of those persons and organizations that have played a role in the development of our understanding of torture, a data and documents section, and an annotated bibliography for future research, as well as an event timeline and glossary of key terms. This volume is aims to present facts in as objective a way as possible while providing readers with the resources they need for further study.

Why Torture Doesn’t Work

Why Torture Doesn’t Work PDF Author: Shane O'Mara
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674743903
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Torture is banned because it is cruel and inhumane. But as Shane O’Mara writes in this account of the human brain under stress, another reason torture should never be condoned is because it does not work the way torturers assume it does. In countless films and TV shows such as Homeland and 24, torture is portrayed as a harsh necessity. If cruelty can extract secrets that will save lives, so be it. CIA officers and others conducted torture using precisely this justification. But does torture accomplish what its defenders say it does? For ethical reasons, there are no scientific studies of torture. But neuroscientists know a lot about how the brain reacts to fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, and immersion in freezing water, all tools of the torturer’s trade. These stressors create problems for memory, mood, and thinking, and sufferers predictably produce information that is deeply unreliable—and, for intelligence purposes, even counterproductive. As O’Mara guides us through the neuroscience of suffering, he reveals the brain to be much more complex than the brute calculations of torturers have allowed, and he points the way to a humane approach to interrogation, founded in the science of brain and behavior. Torture may be effective in forcing confessions, as in Stalin’s Russia. But if we want information that we can depend on to save lives, O’Mara writes, our model should be Napoleon: “It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.”

Does Torture Prevention Work?

Does Torture Prevention Work? PDF Author: Richard Carver
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1781383308
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
In the past three decades, international and regional human rights bodies have developed an ever-lengthening list of measures that states are required to adopt in order to prevent torture. But do any of these mechanisms actually work? This study is the first systematic analysis of the effectiveness of torture prevention. Primary research was conducted in 16 countries, looking at their experience of torture and prevention mechanisms over a 30-year period. Data was analysed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. Prevention measures do work, although some are much more effective than others. Most important of all are the safeguards that should be applied in the first hours and days after a person is taken into custody. Notification of family and access to an independent lawyer and doctor have a significant impact in reducing torture. The investigation and prosecution of torturers and the creation of independent monitoring bodies are also important in reducing torture. An important caveat to the conclusion that prevention works is that is actual practice in police stations and detention centres that matters - not treaties ratified or laws on the statute book.

The Torture Letters

The Torture Letters PDF Author: Laurence Ralph
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022672980X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.

Torture

Torture PDF Author: Edward Peters
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512821691
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
"Torture has ceased to exist," Victor Hugo claimed, with some justification, in 1874. Yet more than a century later, torture is used routinely in one out of every three countries. This book is about torture in Western society from earliest times to the present. A landmark study since its original publication a decade ago, Torture is now available in an expanded and updated paperback edition. Included for the first time is a broad and disturbing selection of documents charting the historical practice of torture from the ancient Romans to the Khmer Rouge.