Showing papers on "Torture published in 1969"
TL;DR: The trend in Western civilization for the past 150 years has been steadily in the direction of more and more commitment to rehabilitation and resocialization of offenders as discussed by the authors, but implementation of these ideas has been extremely slow and hampered by lack of financial support and the excessive frag mentation of the public agencies responsible.
Abstract: Man has never been able to develop a completely rational and satisfactory set of alternatives for dealing with convicted violators of the criminal law The more primitive forms of criminal sanctions were based primarily on ideas of revenge and retribution Execution, physical torture, and public degradation were the most common methods in use until near the close of the eighteenth century Imprisonment as the principal method did not come into general use until the beginning of the nineteenth century Concepts of retributive punishment have persisted, but superimposed upon them were other purposes, such as deterrence, public protection, and rehabilitation The trend in Western civilization for the past 150 years has been steadily in the direction of more and more commitment to rehabilitation and resocialization of offenders Implementation of these ideas has been extremely slow and hampered by lack of financial support and the excessive frag mentation of the public agencies responsible The movement is no
5 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the ways in which the victim can undermine the torture process through the manipulation of two primary, competing discourses developed in order to explain the epistemological value of torture, i.e., the dicens veritatis and thedicens dubitatis, by forcing the torturers to acknowledge the flawed nature of their own discourse through the telling of lies.
Abstract: From the 13th to the 17th century torture became a component of the judicial system, the goal of which was to discover the veracity of the accused. Two primary, competing discourses developed in order to explain the epistemological value of torture, the dicens veritatis and the dicens dubitatis. In the first discourse, torture exists as a producer of legitimate truth, while in the second the use of torture necessarily casts doubt on the obtained confession. This essay examines the ways in which the victim can undermine the torture process through the manipulation of these discourses. This is done within the dicens veritatis when the victim claims innocence and forces the torturer to accept this as truth. Within the dicens dubitatis, this is accomplished by forcing torturers to acknowledge the flawed nature of their own discourse through the telling of lies. The first component of my examination explores the transcripts of the legal proceedings against Domenico Scandella and Jean Bourdil, identifying the differing ways these victims employ both discourses to create a resistance to the torturer’s predetermined narrative of events. The second component scrutinizes the depiction of the body within the philosophical writings of contemporary periods, thereby establishing the epistemological relationship between the body and pain. More broadly, my examination of literary, judicial and philosophical sources interrogates the justification of torture in the Early Modern period, allowing us to gain insight into the historical underpinning of modern sanctions of state-employed torture.