Torture the Argument Against Torture

Torture

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST TORTURE

The use of torture in modern Western society is extremely controversial and is officially prohibited in the United States. Nevertheless, because torture can be effective in eliciting useful tactical and investigative information, accusations have been levied that elements of the U.S. military and law enforcement implement torture by proxy, sometimes transferring custody of suspected terrorists to other countries with whom the U.S. shares friendly relations where torture is not prohibited by law (Scheuer 2004).

In the U.S. The Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution (Dershowitz 2002) and general moral objection to torture prohibit the torturing of criminal suspects and prisoners. With the possible exception of eliciting information necessary to prevent the future murder of large numbers of people under imminent threat, the disadvantage of torture outweigh any of its supposed benefits, even aside from the general objection based on moral principle. Punishment and Deterrence: Torture was a very common form of punishment in ancient human societies and throughout the Middle Ages. Even as late as the 19th century, torture was used in the U.S. (such as in connection to trials of witches) and in Britain, (such as in connection to treason against the Royal Crown). In several Middle Eastern societies, torture is still used as a form of punishment, such as in the form of the unanesthetized amputation of the hands of thieves. Naturally, torture has a significant deterrent value; on the other hand, the implications of authorized torture by the State present too great a cost to civilized society in several respects.

The fundamental conceptual problem with the use of torture as punishment is that it relies on subjective opinion to justify its use with respect to specific crimes deemed sufficiently egregious to warrant such punishment. Furthermore, the purposeful infliction of pain and humiliation in others utterly without cause is acutely susceptible to some of the worst unconscious human tendencies, as demonstrated by the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment conducted in 1970 by Stanford professor of psychology, Phillip Zimbardo (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005).

Much more recently, professor Zimbardo was called upon to investigate the disturbing allegations of torture inflicted on prisoners of U.S. armed forces at Abu Ghraib Detention Facility in Iraq and at the Guantanamo BayDetention Facility in Cuba. All three examples of unauthorized abuse and torture demonstrate the extent to which the authorized use of torture is susceptible to influences wholly outside the realm of objective justification. The principal problem is that human societies differ so substantially in their values that it is virtually impossible to justify such an extreme punishment in one society objectively for conduct that is perfectly permissible in others. If the only measure of morality is social mores, the use of torture is not subject to any moral criticism from outside a culture that espouses its use.

Arguably, in all cases of criminal activity except crime actually consisting of inflicting torture, the punishment is worse than the crime for which it is prescribed as punishment. Even for the crime of murder (without torture), the infliction of many tortures are worse than the crime. The moral justification for executing a murderer is much more obvious than the infliction of any punishment that is even worse from the perspective of the murder. Torture may be appropriate with regard to specific crimes of torture, but that requires civil society to stoop to the level of barbarity of criminals.