Celling Americas Soul: Torture and Transformation In Our Prisons & Why We Should Care

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Which, conveniently, is a doctrine that means real world rules need not apply? Of course, interventions such as deterrence and catching and rehabilitating a potential criminal ahead of time trade on some degree of cooperation with a criminal, so in that sense you could argue that Jerry really should say some criminals have a choice. Given the context, though, I find it hard to see how this could mean he was contradictory.

I am trying to show you that the free will argument has nothing to do with how we should treat criminals and should not be used in such contexts. The type of choice or determinism is philosophically the same for both kinds of actions. Retribution, when looked at square-on rather than taken as a non-negotiable part of the moral reasoning, makes no sense whatsoever. The only way people can justify retribution, therefore, is the same as how they can justify pointless religious rituals and prayers; either by invoking a secular reason, which drags in a whole host of thorns, or by weak doctrines, gut assumptions, and an associated unquestioned baggage protected by strong moral passions and deflected or spurious scrutiny.

And why make this deterrence-punishment the prime motive in the penal system when it itself is a necessary evil that should be superseded whenever possible? With such means as believing human minds and societal arrangements just run on a completely different logic — like free will — that transcends this kind of ordinary, worldly logic. Then forget the free will argument. If you are a non dualist you probably accept determinism. So, the fact that we are influenced by our environment and genetics and that we are constrained by the laws of physics, can this not show that providing certain inputs to brains may result in a certain outcome of course depending on the physiology and experiences of the brain?

You keep arguing like you do not know what the philosophical problem of free will is. The reason Jerry is contradictory is that he employs the absence of free will selectively rather than universally — and if he is talking about philosophical free will, he simply cannot do that. Philosophical free will or the absence thereof is a universal principle. Ability to decade on one actions the way the two of you argue is impaired in criminals and not in legislators. This is NOT, and cannot be due to philosophical free will or absence thereof but it operates at the level of the psychology of the individual.

The latter has nothing to do with the free will problem. Please stop confusing the two. You have failed to do so clearly in your dismissive comment above. Only the difference between a well-constructed argument and a fallacy. The point is that this is a problem to fix. He is also a problem to fix, because there is no justification for his continued presence there.

More cognitively, a mental wire might get tripped that causes a human to, say, go around killing rather than sit at home and quietly watch TV. If you are interested in reducing such incidents, you want to find such causes at the source for optimum efficiency. Not at all true. Sorry to derail your discussion somewhat with this, but I hate seeing this concept tossed around unchallenged. Ignorance, lack of education, lack of exposure to others, and ideological indoctrination can all contribute to beliefs that lead a rational being into doing horrible things. Humans do not need to be crazy to commit atrocities — being ignorant or simply wrong can easily suffice.

Something has to go wrong for such a deed to happen. From a medical standpoint, approaching this should be no different from approaching an asymptomatic carrier of an infectious disease; even if the host suffers no ill-effects, somebody around them might. And prevention is better than cure or deterrence, as the case may be.

Killing is an extreme crime and it may well be true that most people committing murder have some kind of cognitive defect but if we drop down to less serious crimes it is quite easy to see how a rational person might decide to commit them. Consider a financial fraud: But then this raises the question of why something should be deemed a crime in the first place. If taking money fraudulently held no averse consequences — or at least, no more than other neutral behaviours like driving on the right or queuing to get a service — then that would be a case for decriminalizing it.

Even if the harm only comes if such activities are indulged in the aggregate, you would still have to provide a rational argument for and against criminalization. Which is exactly my point. If a crime is committed, then either the criminal acted contrary to the best arguments, or the law has been set up in error contrary to the best arguments. Either way, someone screwed up. On what basis are those rules agreed upon? It may also be rational in other circumstances: We are very good at killing one another and finding reasons, good and bad, to do so.

Should conscientious objectors and non-violent protesters willing to go to jail for their beliefs be sent instead to a mental institution to have their beliefs modified? Dissent from social norms is not automatically a sign of mental illness. Respect for individual autonomy demands that we treat people as responsible agents, even when they do bad things, unless we have compelling independent evidence that their competence is somehow impaired. Whether somebody is a rational or an irrational human being has nothing to do with the philosophical question of free will.

It has nothing to do with differences between individuals, or with rationality for that matter. Please educate yourself on the basics before discussing further. Can anyone recommend a primer on the subject? What is free will? Oh, no, Brujo Feo, you are far from alone. Thank you for being the one to ask. Otherwise, the Encylopaedia of Philosophy Edwards, has, Honderich says, some good articles on the problem. He explores the same ideas at greater depth in Freedom Evolves. Dennett is arguably the foremost living advocate of compatibilism, so his books are pretty much required reading for anyone who wants to seriously challenge that view.

Your proposal is un-American! But how will we sustain the exponential growth in the profits of our private prison corporations?! Then, the unemployment rate would go up. And all those private colleges selling online degrees in how to be a prison guard? And the teachers would get fired.

And the unemployment rate would go higher! Some people commit acts that are so heinous, no matter how determinist their motive, that they permanently and irrevocably forfeit all rights to live among us. Still, despite cases like that, Norway is on to what looks a good approach.

But I do not see a way out of our USA horrific penal system apart from bankruptsy forcing changes. We are incapable of reasoned debate on several topics. Abortion, guns, crime, race. Despite all the evidence that our penal system and gun laws are deeply, tragically flawed and that others are able to deal with these issues effectively more or less the discussion here, if it ever happens at all, will not be about that evidence.

Nor will it be about outcomes. It is the American way US, I mean is to pretend that arguing about something is doing something about it. In a country where the massacre of more than twenty first graders by a lunatic with a machine gun that is easier to obtain than adopting a kitten produces exactly nothing to address the obscenity that is our gun culture, there is no hope whatsoever that this somewhat related issue can be addressed until we are forced by calamity.

I am with you most of the way. But we have changed over the centuries, and it is possible that we will evolve in that more enlightened direction. The status quo is not sustainable, after all.

Every one of those issues has become subject to fact revisionism in the same way tobacco was by the tobacco industry. Indeed it seems more and more every possible subject is becoming part and parcel of the highly polarized American political system, and turned into a black and white issue without nuance, fodder for a certain news station.

Yeah I see your point and it is hard to see where things will go with the U. Once we have solved the problem of economic security in the U. Vote for Bernie Sanders if you dare. Hope and hope that the American public would never elect Ted Cruz, no matter what, I guess. Go after his place of birth? See whether he was considered an American citizen from the time of birth or changed his status later? Getting desperate, here, as you can see.

I joined the Libertarian Party in , when I turned Never went back, because that was the year that the LP decided to whore itself out to mass-murderer Bob Barr as its candidate. This year, I will probably switch to the Dems just to vote for Bernie Sanders in the primary. And absolutely over a war-mongering, drug-warrior, corporatist tool like Hillary. Let me put it this way — I am, at this moment, a fairly different person than I was ten years ago.

I made decisions then that I never would now, I believed things then that I now hold to be false, and a significantly different set of social and biological pressures were acting upon my thinking. Indeed, most of the matter making up my body then is no longer present in my current body. So, if I were to be punished now for something I did then, is the person who committed the crime actually being punished? It may, for the most part, slow down a fair bit, but we are constantly evolving individuals, and the endgame individual can be as different as two people can possibly be from who they were when younger.

Now, in the case of punishment for bad behavior, I absolutely think that this change needs to be great and demonstrable to be taken into account. But I cannot support the notion of locking someone up and throwing away the key, no matter their crime. Not 21 years, 21 to life. Which in this case means life. What is your factual basis for this claim?

I would say that criminals DO choose- just like everyone else, other animals, robots, etc. However, our choices are determined as the nervous system is largely a deterministic machine. Alternatively, if our choices are not determined, then they are random. Either way, there is no free will.

The implications for the idea of retributive justice are the same. Other that conditions within the prison system, conditions post-release may increase the rate of recidivism. When your skill-set centers on the very activities that put you in prison to begin with, re-engaging in those activities is the easiest option in lessening the financial burden.

I have a client that works directly with the Az Dept of Justice in hiring call center workers, but this is hardly a skilled profession. My hunch is this is seen as part of the deserved punishment. Also, felons are not allowed to vote. I think vengeance runs deep in the heart of America. The puritan ethic, and all that. I was thinking along the same lines. Many people return to the communities they are from, and continue hanging out with the same people, who are often into the behaviors that landed them in prison. I have worked in a secure unit for young offenders in the UK where we fall between the two stools of punishment and rehabilitation.

But we were still underfunded. As a result our reoffending rate was ridiculous, we would see the same kids over and over as they came for a short stint then get released straight back into the same environment that the offending behaviour occurred in in the first place. We need to work out what the hell we are doing with UK prisons, we could easily move towards the US model — privatisation is happening here too — but the Norwegian model is still open to us if the political will is there.

I have a feeling that the social conditions outside prison are as much to do with their success as anything, life is OK there if you just toe the line, here in the UK with the poverty and inequality it was going to be crap for our secure unit alumni whatever they did. The American system of criminal jurisprudence was best described by a former justice of the Michigan Supreme court, John Voelker, author of the novel under his pseudonym, Robert Traver Anatomy of a Murder , which was made into a movie starring James Stewart. It is perfectly okay to disagree with what most of the readers here think about this issue but after you say it, know when to quit.

Who warehouses millions of people in prison and accomplishes nothing but runs out of beds? How can you not look at other countries success to solve your failures? His appraisal of the US criminal justice system was decidedly negative, calling it a massive waste of money and ineffective at preventing recidivism. Sweden and even Japan have a similar philosophy towards prisoners, as recounted in The Spirit Level.

There, though, the authors correlated it with income inequality. I know I say something like this every time, but the Norway-USA comparison simply underscores to me that the free will question is a red herring. The fact is that Norway is buying more crime prevention at a lower cost lower in terms of both money and suffering. That should be the end of the story: This is my reaction as well. The arguments in favor of the Norwegian system are not metaphysical but empirical and consequentialist: It seems counterproductive to insist that before we can recognize these practical advantages, we must first persuade everyone to renounce free will and embrace determinism.

The supposition that accepting incompatibilist determinism is a kind of cure-all that will somehow magically transform attitudes to the punishment of criminals, and to homosexuality, etc seems to me to be, in all honesty, questionable. Why are people hostile to consequentialist ethics? I would argue that resual religion and theism is part. I would have to do more work, of course, to support this, but it was my impression in ethics classes years ago.

One should either agree with that statement or disagree with it before getting bogged down in discussions of free will. According to the Oslo Police, they receive more than 15, reports of petty thefts annually. The rate is more than seven times the number per-capita of Berlin. A large proportion of the crime that is carried out in Norway is committed by criminals from overseas, with 34 percent of the prison population being foreigners… In his autobiography Undesirables, British criminal Colin Blaney has claimed that gangs of English thieves target the nation on account of the perception that its prisons are relatively comfortable compared to those of other countries… Studies also indicate that this is one of the reasons that criminals from other parts of the world commit crime in Norway.

It is an article about Norway in the english Wikipedia, curated by 2 persons norwegians by name who relies on a few sources, repeat them and use them tendentiously. I had no idea there was more than one version of Wikipedia! I thought the one version was translated into different languages, and that was that. How did you know? Also, good work on following up the sources for verification of material.

And, finally, if non-Norwegians are moving there to commit crimes, they very likely come from places with poor criminal justice systems and cultures breeding criminals, not unlike the USA. If Norway could capture and rehabilitate even them, that would very strongly back up the validity of their style of justice, putting it far, far above the American style. While I believe Japan does have an expectation that most prisoners will return to society, from what I have read their prisons are decidedly more strict and less comfortable than Scandinavian prisons seem to be.

Prison conditions are tough and regimented, food is reputedly poor, almost everyone works, punishments for breaches of nitpicking regulations are severe, and instances of guard brutality have been documented there were several prisoner deaths at Nagoya Prison in the early s that caused a scandal and partial rethink of the system.

Japan also retains the death penalty, though the total death row population across the country is said to be only around and executions are rare 7, 8, and 3 in , , and , respectively — none so far this year. Police interrogation of suspects used to be fairly notorious suspects can be held at police stations for up to 22 days, and used to be subject to long interrogation, but the length of interrogations was reduced a few years ago; and they do not necessarily have access to a lawyer immediately — no Miranda rights.

Incarceration rates, however, are low: In Japan nonconformity is frowned on. Antisocial behavior is for many unthinkable. Of course, the Japanese right would like to believe that it is homogeneous… but they are not really to be trusted. The authors of The Spirit Level give a completely different impression. Although they do note that discipline is strict, they also report that sentences can be more lenient in the face of confessions and remorse, that prisons tend to be more comfortable, and that prisoners have access to training and recreational activities, among other things.

Imagine living for hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, knowing that any minute you could be given that one hour of notice. What do you say to your family, when you are able? What do you say to yourself, to sustain your own humanity? I find it fascinating to be in complete agreement with you throughout almost the entire piece, insofar as the Norway model looks much more sensible on a variety of levels.

No, as far as I know Norway is not a society of incompatibilists. I agree that the urge for retribution, the urge to see a criminal SUFFER for his crime is one that is ultimately pernicious. And even lots of Christians who believe in free will actually think forgiveness is the better attitude — see the Charleston Church families forgiving the shooter. And incompatibilism does not logically entail more humane treatment of criminals. It could be the case that harsher treatment of criminals, treating them as fully responsible, has a better outcome for society.

But if you can show that treating criminals more humanely gets a better outcome, then THERE is your argument for doing so, without requiring incompatibilism to make the case. The problem I see is not only does pushing incompatibilism seem unnecessary if not utterly beside the point for arguments on how to treat criminals, I have yet to see a version of incompatibilism promulgated that did not seem to imply fatalism, which would seem to be risky for a society to believe.

But then that same fatalism aims right into our future choices and you are telling people THEIR future choices are just as fatalistic. Which undercuts the prescriptions you want to make in the first place. I really found the shot at compatibilists to be gratuitous and, frankly, irrelevant. I would add that I find appeals such as those of Johan just below to be far more effective than those involving free will.

Hughbanks for telling me how to write. And seriously, you think that determinism carries NO implications for how we treat malefactors? You seem annoyed that you have a number of compatibilists who comment here that you have been unable to bring around to your point of view and I think you stick it to them without really addressing their points. As I have noted many times, you and your readers who agree with you seem — in contexts that free will is not being explicitly discussed — to behave very much like compatibilists. You praise and criticise music, art, intellectual efforts, etc.

You think you had an idea, but your idea is just brain chemistry. You and I disagree about what is going to be more a more effective way to make him or his descendents realize that revenge will not solve their problem: I think it is more effective to convince him that his view just makes him more like the people who took his loved ones away.

We could not have done otherwise, though we think we could have done otherwise. In other words, our feeling of agency is not what we think it is. THAT is an illusion, by definition. If we feel we could have done otherwise but, as you admit, could not have, what is that feeling but an illusion? Because of that, we are not fatalists, and therefore although Vaal thinks that, on an intellectual level, determinism implies fatalism, as far as the way we behave because of our evolved brains, it does not. That is why your comment came across and snark.

In the end, I find it a cheap shot to claim that if I were really a determinist I would be a fatalist. There is no logical contradiction here: And we disagree about tactics as well: The argument that those who favor execution as as bad as those who murder has been made for decade: Just to clear up that misunderstanding: What this clearly is meant to tap in to is the sentiment that if someone had no real choice, they do not deserve blame and recrimination.

Tapping in to this thinking on first glance makes sense: This is a concept already operating, doing work, in our moral calculous. Bob and Ted are both at the edge of a swimming pool when a toddler drowns. Both were aware of the child drowning, but neither saved the child. Bob was healthy and a strong swimmer, Ted is a paraplegic. But note that the very nature of how we normally apply this thinking e.

But I would not apply that blame toward the teller who had a gun held to her head. I am skeptical that you can leverage essentially the same sentiment and attitude changes via a premise that erases the very differences that usually promote our changes in attitude. And the logic of feedback — operant conditioning comes to mind — is perfectly compatible with determinism without invoking free will. I might just take it on board, anyway, come to that. I happen to agree with this. But I do think we can all benefit from having apparent inconsistencies in our arguments pointed out in a civil manner.

It seems a direct empirical challenge to the idea we have to undercut free will first in order to get there. Of course determinism in specific instances is important; we want to know what explains or determines various behaviors. And as some of us have argued here: Jerry takes a smack at philosophers as well as compatibilists, but there are incompatibilist philosophers who deal with precisely the things that Jerry is exhorting them to do, and have done so for years.

He remarks on the way philosophers who are concerned with the consequences of determinism have given attention to the question of punishment and goes on to say: But… determinism does have consequences for more social facts than punishment. It has consequences for what we can as well call the social actions that enter into the rewarding of law-abiders, distributions of income and wealth, distribution of power and rank, and official praising and blaming.

So that I think it is wrong to suggest that philosophers have not been doing their job. And I agree with Honderich that the focus on punishment alone is insufficient. I made a mistake in writing about Honderich: A rather good idea, I think. Incompatibilism and determinism do NOT imply fatalism. Fatalism means that no matter what you do, the outcome will be the same. On the contrary, in a deterministic universe what we decide to do very much affects the outcome. I agree that determinism does not imply fatalism. But in order to say that our choices really do matter, you first have to concede that choice is a real thing, even in a deterministic world.

That would seem to be at odds with the brand of incompatibilism often put forward here, which holds that determinism precludes choice. I think this is only because our language reflects the illusion of dualistic free will. Choice is the process of selecting and implementing a particular behavior from a repertoire of available behaviors. Nothing spooky about that; a chess-playing computer can do it. Axolotl does something like this above, wherein he assumes that making choices automatically suggests responsibility and punishability.

Call it paranoia, but I think making clear the distinction between fatalism and determinism should be a higher priority than assuming people will just get it if we use the secular sense without qualification. You are rejecting the finding in psychological studies e. That is what THEY mean by choice. I welcome and enjoy your point of view, which challenge my own position, and keeps me pondering if I it is justified, as I should be doing. The questions they asked were 1 whether human decisions are deterministic, and 2 whether moral responsibility is compatible with determinism.

This might suggest that your campaign to convert the public to determinism will have the unintended effect of converting them to compatibilism as well. Which is fine with me. I honestly think our energies are best served promoting determinism and ridding the world of the misguided and dangerous idea of dualism. The word choice comes out of our dualistic past. There is nothing explicitly contra-causal or dualistic at all in those definitions. Which is why all of those can fit comfortably within a deterministic framework, and why even as a determinist you will find them fruitful to employ.

But I do find this argument tedious. I feel like Joshua had good advice to Dr.

We should focus on promoting determinism and ridding the world of dualistic ideas, not quibbling over free will and linguistics. The word choice arose to describe situations in which we can select from among various options. Whether the world is deterministic or not, we find ourselves in such situations all day long — physical situations — and required a word to describe it.

And this only tends to arise because Jerry so often chides compatibilists for re-defining words to suit themselves. I get the compatibilist position. Determinism is worth fighting over and we are on the same side of that fight. But the point of the comment is to suggest that etymological arguments need to treated with caution.

Andrew Sullivan

I confess I am slightly reminded of the internecine squabbles between Bolsheviks and Memsheviks, say, or between religious sects whose beliefs differ in very minor ways, or between Lilliput and Blefuscu. It always denotes one empirical state of affairs vs another e. Look at at the article, you will see an opinion backed up with evidence. You can see what I mean simply by taking a look at a deliberate choice you have made — e. Why did you choose to do that? Will you appeal to metaphysics? And that is precisely why it does not figure into our chain of reasoning in most everyday choice-making.

When making choices we are normally thinking about what we desire, and what steps we can take to fulfill that desire, deciding which steps are plausible or best taken, based on what we think we are capable of.

No, instead he will describe his thought processes like anyone else, relating a set of desires he had and how the car best fulfilled that set of desires. Some significant portion of humanity DOES make this association. Yes, choice is a real thing. Animals, insects, and robots can legitimately choose. At least to do the type of attitude changing they seek. I highly doubt it, nor would anyone I know.

Can you not see the problem in doing so? The choices we make really matter. If you blame someone it is a statement about yourself, your own feelings. It cannot be valid evidence for the blameworthiness of other people. If someone is ill we try to cure him. Why not treat bad behavior in the same way?

Yes, but ultimately what matters is pragmatism: We are just machines made of meat- and carrots and sticks will only work in a largely deterministic universe at least at the level of actions. What ultimately matters is what the rest of society should do with criminals in order to deter future crimes and protect society. This understanding seems to underlie the enlightened approach of the Norwegian judicial system.

Alert readers know that I post regularly about the Norwegian prison system. The main motivation for treating prisoners humanely—at least in Norway—is not for the benefit of the prisoners but for the benefit of the jailers, i. If we behave brutally, we become brutal. And that is how I think about the Death Penalty. What is more likely to reduce the desire to kill — promulgating the attitude that killing must be met with more killing?

It seems to me the latter. And it seems at least on the face of it, the Norway model offers some support for this approach. This argument also applies to why torture is abhorrent. A torturer who is horrified to be a torturer is being dehumanized in a terrible way. Not to mention those near and dear to the torturer. Jerry Coyne, as a citizen of Norway, i think that they attitude of the police here is very different also. I myself is from an minority My parents imigrated here, but i am born here , and the way police have dealth with me, and everyone else is very different.

Some years ago i was playing soccer with my friends, when i fight started between the two teams. The police came, but instead of arresting anyone, they just splitted us in two parts and talked to us. After that they left. Similiarly, my friend was taken for smoking marijuana a few days ago which is illegal here , but instead of arresting him, the police just asked him to drop it, and gave him some advice.

I have talked with some friends from Texas about this, and for me it seems like the difference between norwegian police and american, is that the norwegian police have much longer training years , and that people here dont have weapons, so police dont approach people with their hands on their holster. Here is a video which i think shows the normal norwegian police. Here, it too often seems police feel a right to dispense justice — through restraints, violence, pepper spray, tear gas, etc.

She says essentially the same thing as this post. A day wifowt kittehs iz a day wifowt sunshine. Eben teh smallest kitteh iz a masterpeece. Sun, 21 Jun I do not think any country puts people in jail and prison like the United States. Maybe North Korea but probably not. The system of bail and plea bargain are American examples of non justice and you can take that along with your bill of rights to the bank. Thousands of people in jail because they cannot make bail and therefore plead out just to get out of jail and this is all without trial. I think the plead out rate in many states is something like 90 percent.

Time served is a very popular term. One might always be leery of Wiki as a primary source, but these figures are generally accepted by any nymber of other commentators: But how far down do we have to go down the list from the U. That would be England and Wales at No. Especially since the Wiki listings give a very chilling aside about the U. Rate is for inmates held in adult facilities.

For juvenile detention numbers see Youth incarceration in the United States.

Why is Norway’s prison system so successful? « Why Evolution Is True

See notes at the bottom of the U. Excludes inmates held in U. Territories appendix tables 2 and 3 , military facilities appendix tables 2 and 4 , U. In those days the outcome of the war was uncertain and we did not want to think about the future. Only one thing seemed impossible in any circumstances: How can they act as they do?

And we were proud of ourselves for not understanding. Anybody, at any time, may equally find himself victim or executioner. WW II, of course, had shown that on a ghastly scale. Later, psychological experiments by Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo were to show the same thing with good, law-abiding American citizens. All these organizations agree that these abuses are NOT accidental or random acts by a few sadistic individuals. The American Psychological Association, in contrast, has remained silent.

America is promoting freedom around the world. It bothers our conscience. How, then do we deal with the fact that people are looking at what we are doing to prisoners and calling it torture? The result of the suspension of these provisions is illustrated in this and other images in this document. As one intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib said in an e-mail message he sent in August X has made it clear that we want these individuals broken.

Torture in the name of God. Torture is always justified by ends of which the superego—the conscience—approves. What you then have is a supremely dangerous combination: The superego—the part of the self that civilization counts on to keeps the instinct to violence in check—teams up with the worst in the human personality and justifies, maybe demands—violence.

This is a pretty deadly alliance—worlds can be destroyed. Here is an example. The Beginning of Torture In Afghanistan in , there had been a rocket attack on an American military camp and a 22 year old Afghan—he was a farmer and taxi driver, and the father of a 3 year old girl—was turned over to our troops by a local Afghan guerilla commander. It later turned out that the guerilla commander had probably organized the attack himself and that the taxi driver was certainly innocent. In anyone brought in for interrogation to Bagram—whether innocent or guilty—was routinely kept hooded and shackled for the first 24 hours.

So, this young man—whose name was Dilawar—was hooded, and chained by his wrists to the ceiling. Specialist Jones responded with a couple of knee strikes to his leg just above the knee. This knee strike to the upper leg is very painful and also disabling; it has a special name: Permission to torture had transformed these young Americans into sadists. After something like four days shackled to the ceiling, during which time he was beaten about the legs, alternating with being taken down for questioning and abuse by interrogators of both sexes, Dilawar died.

In Bagram, as at Abu Ghraib, when these abuses were exposed, the only people so far held to account have been at the lowest level in the hierarchy. Apart from one female reserve general, none of the officers in the middle or upper reaches of the hierarchy have been reprimanded and none will be prosecuted.

How could they be? The policy that led to these abuses lead right up the chain of command to the Secretary of Defense and the President. McNeil, commander of allied forces in Afghanistan: Task Force in Afghanistan: I would rather not receive the information than to harm an individual to receive it. We would like to know what our left and right limits are in respect to stress positions and sleep adjustment, for instance. Apparently, it was not forthcoming so we have….. If General McNeill and Col. Incidentally, she arrived at Bagram a lieutenant and left a captain.

Apparently her work earned her a promotion. The evidence that upper echelons either turned a blind eye toward abuse of prisoners or actively encouraged it keeps on mounting. Captain Ian Fishback of the 82 nd Airborne Division took the extraordinary step of meeting with Senator John McCain about the persistent abuse of prisoners by members of the First Battalion, th Parachute Infantry of that division. These abuses included beatings, subjecting men to extremes of hot and cold and stacking them in human pyramids.

For seventeen months, he failed to get his superiors to intervene to stop these abuses or even issue clear guidelines for the treatment of prisoners. James Yee, the Muslim chaplain at Gunantanamo, against whom charges of espionage were first made and then dropped, tells of how Maj. Guards responded, Yee said, by retaliating against prisoners both physically and psychologically. Not a bad paradigm for torture.

There were signs of anxiety and conflict—sweating, trembling, nervous laughter.

Why is Norway’s prison system so successful?

But a minority did not. Instead of obeying the authority, they obeyed the individual voice of conscience and refused to go on. They were randomly divided into two groups—guards and prisoners. The prisoners were made to wear smocks as their only article of clothing and stockings were put on their heads to make it look like their heads were shaved. The guards wore uniforms and mirrored sunglasses. Zimbardo stopped the experiment after six days.

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A group dynamic very quickly developed among the guards where rebelliousness among the prisoners was met by escalation of ever stricter and more arbitrary deprivations and humiliations. No actual physical abuse took place, but psychological abuse did. And sexual abuse too—in the form of making the prisoners simulate various forms of sex with each other—remarkably like what happened at Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib After the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, there was much soul-searching about what the rules for interrogation were and the clarity with which they had been communicated down the chain of command.

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