NCJ Number
183335
Journal
Punishment and Society Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2000 Pages: 181-196
Date Published
April 2000
Length
16 pages
Annotation
The practice of torture will arguably best be countered by confronting the subterranean utilitarian justifications of torture on their own terms; over the long term it does not work, but rather undermines the legitimacy of the state itself.
Abstract
At the end of the 20th century, torture thrives most in societies characterized by gross inequalities of power or where one ethnic or religious community seeks to repress, through force, the interests of another. In these campaigns, torture is used as a terror tactic. The ultimate utilitarian objection to torture is that it corrosively delegitimizes the state. The torturer's most potent threat to the captive and isolated subject may be that the torturer can do whatever he wills to the captive and there is no one to restrain him and no one to act as an advocate for the captive. Inevitably the truth about acts of torture emerge, however, as in Turkey, Israel, Algeria, and Northern Ireland. When the truth emerges, the repercussions go beyond citizens asking themselves whether there is an essential difference between the threat posed to persons subject to the presumption of innocence at the hands of the state and the threat posed by criminals, against whom the state purports to offer protection to its citizens. Citizens begin to fear that they, too, may cross the line into the "other," whom the state targets as a threat. Moral, religious, ethnic, sexual, or nationality categories are never so clear cut; individuals stray across or are ambiguously related to them; once the venom of oppressive torture is unleashed, ultimately all begin to feel vulnerable. Once the practice of torture is revealed and believed by citizens, cynicism and mistrust of the state emerges, and only years of official integrity can begin to restore citizens' trust in the state. 32 references