Torture

About: Torture is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8173 publications have been published within this topic receiving 109895 citations.

Political Policing: The United States and Latin America

Abstract: Reconstructing eighty years of history, Political Policing examines the nature and consequences of U.S. police training in Brazil and other Latin American countries. With data from a wide range of primary sources, including previously classified U.S. and Brazilian government documents, Martha K. Huggins uncovers how U.S. strategies to gain political control through police assistance - in the name of hemispheric and national security - has spawned torture, murder, and death squads in Latin America. After a historical review of policing in the United States and Europe over the past century, Huggins reveals how the United States, in order to protect and strengthen its position in the world system, has used police assistance to establish intelligence and other social control infrastructures in foreign countries. The U.S.-encouraged centralization of Latin American internal security systems, Huggins claims, has led to the militarization of the police and, in turn, to an increase in state-sanctioned violence. Furthermore, Political Policing shows how a domestic police force - when trained by another government - can lose its power over legitimate crime as it becomes a tool for the international interests of the nation that trains it. Pointing to U.S. responsibility for violations of human rights by foreign security forces, Political Policing will provoke discussion among those interested in international relations, criminal justice, human rights, and the sociology of policing.

State Crime, Human Rights, and the Limits of Criminology

Abstract: THE AIM OF THIS ARTICLE IS TO SUGGEST HOW CRIMINOLOGY CAN REMEDY ITS neglect of the important phenomenon of state crime, without adopting such a broad definition of "crime" as to destroy what coherence criminology has as a distinct field of study. To assess the universality of our approach we employ examples from two different state traditions, Anglo-American and Turkish. Our definition allows us to examine countries as diverse as Turkey and the United Kingdom from the perspective of a continuum, rather than as two discrete, incomparable state formations -- authoritarian and democratic. One of our reasons for selecting Turkey as a comparative example is that it is a democratizing state with an authoritarian historical backdrop. Torture of detainees, extrajudicial killings and disappearances, violent public order policing, forced evacuations, the razing of whole villages, and the routine harassment of trade unionists, media workers, and human rights defenders form the human rights landscape in much of Turkey (see Amnesty International, 1998; European Commission, 1998; Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, 1997, 1998; Human Rights Watch, 1999). Torture is, however, in breach of Article 17 of the Constitution and Articles 243 and 245 of the penal code, and is punishable by up to five years of imprisonment. Proposals documented in the new draft penal code are set to increase the powers of the courts in punishing state officials found guilty of torture and ill treatment of detainees. In some celebrated cases, state officials have been charged with criminal conduct, but they are few and the crimes a re many. In 1999, six police officers were sentenced to five and one-half years each for torturing a suspect to death in 1993, but most other cases against state officials have resulted in very lenient sentences, fines, or acquittals. The violence of the Turkish state is of a different order of magnitude to that employed in most liberal democracies. Yet instances of violent crime by British and American state officials are not difficult to find -- recent revelations about the Los Angeles Police Department, and allegations of brutality against officers at the Wormwood Scrubs and Wandsworth prisons in England are among the more obvious examples. Less well-publicized is the extent to which legally unjustifiable violence is routinely used by police to enforce social discipline in some working-class areas (Choongh, 1997; Waddington, 1999). Despite the arguments of some theorists (e.g., Giddens, 1985) to the contrary, the use and threat of physical violence remain central to state power in liberal democracies. Cover's remarks on American criminal trials bring this out vividly: If convicted the defendant customarily walks -escorted--to prolonged confinement, usually without significant disturbance to the civil appearance of the event. It is, of course, grotesque to assume that the civil facade is voluntary." ...There are societies in which contrition and shame control defendants' behaviour to a greater extent than does violence.... But I think it is unquestionably the case in the United States that most prisoners walk into prison because they know they will be dragged or beaten into prison if they do not walk (Cover, 1986: 1, 607). The legal limits of legitimate force are inherently vague -- it is impossible to define in advance exactly what form of dragging or beating the prisoner may legitimately receive -- and strict enforcement of what limits do exist is intrinsically difficult and will often be contrary to the interests of the enforcing agency. It would therefore be surprising to discover any state in which criminal or legally ambiguous acts of violence by state agents did not occur. It would be equally astounding if any state were able to eliminate the innumerable opportunities for predatory crime inherent in economic regulation and revenue-raising (Smart, 1999). Some states, however, plainly commit far more and more serious crimes than others do, and it might be expected that these differences would be among the central concerns of criminology (Comfort, 1950). …

The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties

Abstract: If Abraham Lincoln was known as the Great Emancipator, he was also the only president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Indeed, Lincoln's record on the Constitution and individual rights has fueled a century of debate, from charges that Democrats were singled out for harrassment to Gore Vidal's depiction of Lincoln as an "absolute dictator." Now, in The Fate of Liberty, one of America's leading authorities on Lincoln wades straight into this controversy, showing just who was jailed and why, even as he explores the whole range of Lincoln's constitutional policies. Mark Neely depicts Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus as a well-intentioned attempt to deal with a floodtide of unforeseen events: the threat to Washington as Maryland flirted with secession, distintegrating public order in the border states, corruption among military contractors, the occupation of hostile Confederate territory, contraband trade with the South, and the outcry against the first draft in U.S. history. Drawing upon letters from prisoners, records of military courts and federal prisons, memoirs, and federal archives, he paints a vivid picture of how Lincoln responded to these problems, how his policies were actually executed, and the virulent political debates that followed. Lincoln emerges from this account with this legendary statesmanship intact--mindful of political realities and prone to temper the sentences of military courts, concerned not with persecuting his opponents but with prosecuting the war efficiently. In addition, Neely explores the abuses of power under the regime of martial law: the routine torture of suspected deserters, widespread antisemitism among Union generals and officials, the common practice of seizing civilian hostages. He finds that though the system of military justice was flawed, it suffered less from merciless zeal, or political partisanship, than from inefficiency and the friction and complexities of modern war. Drawing on a deep understanding of this unique period, Neely takes a comprehensive look at the issues of civil liberties during Lincoln's administration, placing them firmly in the political context of the time. Written with keen insight and an intimate grasp of the original sources, The Fate of Liberty offers a vivid picture of the crises and chaos of a nation at war with itself, changing our understanding of this president and his most controversial policies.

International Human Rights Law

Abstract: PartIInternational Legal Systems and the Development of Human Rights Law 1 Introduction 2 Historical Antecedents of International Human Rights Law 3 International Law and Human Rights 4 The United Nations System and the Modern Human Rights Regime Part II The International Bill of Rights 5 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 6 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 7 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Part III Regional Protection of Human Rights 8 European Human Rights I 9 European Human Rights II 10 The Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights 11 African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights 12 Other Regional Human Rights Instruments Part IV Group Rights 13 Equality and Non-Discrimination 14 The rights of Minorities 15 The Rights of Peoples and Indigenous Peoples 16 The Rights of Women 17 The rights of the Child 18 Rights of the Disabled 19 Rights of Refugees and Displaced Persons 20 Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families Part V Issues Arising in International Human Rights law 21 Human Rights and International Criminal Law 22 International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law 23 Torture as a Crime in International Law 24 Enforced Disappearances and International Law 25 Terrorism and International Human Rights Law Appendices A1Studying International Law of Human Rights: Sources and Further Research A2Table of Ratification of Human Rights Treaties

Torture And Modernity: Self, Society, And State In Modern Iran

Abstract: Introduction Disciplines And Tortures Qajar Punishments Disciplinary Practices Disciplinary Society Carceral Society Tutelage And Torture Protecting Children Creating a Moral Public Convictions into Prisons Orienting Modernity Questioning the Subject The Rationalization of Iranians How Not to Talk About Torture.