When is torture justified

Another consequence that is little considered is the impact that becoming a torturer would have on the individual responsible.

Pfiffner, 20; Meyer, To torture requires us to overcome our socially conditioned abhorrence of violence and to accept the psychological repercussions. Shue argues that torture carries a much greater moral stigma and therefore requires greater brutalisation than killing in war, for example, as it constitutes an act of violence against an entirely defenceless being.

Shue, The argument for legally sanctioned torture in some situations overlooks the secondary source of suffering it requires; the harmful psychological and social consequences endured by people who must train in and practice torture.

To require this of someone is morally very problematic. A further adverse consequence of allowing torture in some cases is the impact it would have upon the judicial system. US government refusal to allow some of its prisoners to testify in criminal trials has led many to believe that the US is hiding the evidence of torture.

Meyer, They demonstrate the implications of accepting any moral or legal justification for torture; implications which could potentially affect millions of people. Moral Universalism and Human Choice. Following from the arguments above, it is dangerous to approve the practice of torture in any circumstances because of the consequences this could have on a wide range of people.

Accompanying the moral arguments against torture, there must be legal procedures to ensure that the perpetrators of torture are brought to justice. The inhumanity of the act, along with its questionable usefulness and wider implications, makes torture always morally wrong.

However, the humanity of the situation; it will always be individual people who must make the decisions must be taken into account as a mitigating factor. In this essay, I have sought to argue that torture is always morally wrong through a critique of this scenario and through exposing the moral problems that it serves to obscure. After explaining the problem as it is presented and outlining the main arguments for and against torture, I have shown the immediate flaws in the scenario.

These include assumptions of the existence of the bomb, the guilt of the suspect, the effectiveness of torture and ineffectiveness of other methods, and the ability to prevent the disaster. Each is extremely unlikely to be certain in reality, however straightforwardly they may be presented in the moral puzzle, and each uncertainty weakens the case that torture is necessary and, therefore, justified.

In particular, the assumption that torture will produce accurate information is deeply flawed as it can provide no measure for truth and cannot distinguish the guilty from the innocent. Having shown the weaknesses of the case for torture, I then went on to make the case that torture is always morally wrong. The evidence for this is found largely in the wider context of the situation, where we can see implications of legitimising the practice that go beyond the immediate life and death of the situation itself.

There would undoubtedly be innocent victims faced with long-term suffering as a result, and these victims would include those required to carry out torture. Further, the use of torture makes it impossible to use any evidence collected in a criminal trial and the US has already begun to see key suspects being acquitted as a result. These arguments lead me to believe that torture is unjustifiable, even in extreme cases.

However, because the immediate choice is so difficult and because the person making it is possesses human emotions and instincts, I would not absolutely condemn the decision to torture provided it was made in an emergency situation and with the correct intention.

To make prior judgement that torture is justified in some circumstances is dangerous and wrong — torture must be prosecuted as a crime wherever it occurs. However, to recognise the mitigating circumstances when it occurs is also important. Bowden, M. Cogan, C. On the other hand, it might be argued that some instances of the intentional infliction of extreme mental suffering on non-consenting, defenceless persons are cases of torture, albeit some instances such as the above one are not.

Consider, for example, a mock execution or a situation in which a victim with an extreme rat phobia lies naked on the ground with his arms and legs tied to stakes while dozens of rats are placed all over his body and face. However, such suffering at one remove is in general less palpable, and more able to be resisted and subjected to rational control; after all, it is not my body that is being electrocuted, my life that is being threatened, or my uncontrollable extreme fear of rats that is being experienced.

An exception to this general rule might be cases involving the torture of persons with whom the sufferer at one remove has an extremely close relationship and a very strong felt duty of care, e. At any rate, if as appears to be the case, there are some cases of mental torture then the above definition will need to be extended, albeit in a manner that does not admit all cases of the infliction of extreme mental suffering as being instances of torture.

In various national and international laws, e. Such a distinction needs to be made. For one thing, some treatment, e. For another thing, some inhumane treatment does not involve physical suffering to any great extent, and is therefore not torture, properly speaking albeit, the treatment in question may be as morally bad as, or even morally worse than, torture.

Some forms of the infliction of mental suffering are a case in point, as are some forms of morally degrading treatment, e. So torture is the intentional infliction of extreme physical suffering on some non-consenting, defenceless person. Is this an adequate definition of torture? Perhaps not, albeit some theorists, such as Kamm , adhere to this kind of conception. Consider the following imaginary counter-example. A woman who is being raped but who is, nevertheless, still in control of the movement of her jaws sinks her teeth into the face of her attacker causing him excruciating pain against which he is defenceless, until finally he desists.

Surely the woman is not torturing her attacker but rather defending herself by inflicting excruciating pain on her attacker. Evidently what is missing in the account thus far is the relationship between torture and autonomy: torture substantially curtails autonomy.

Is this now an adequate definition of torture? Perhaps not. The above-mentioned U. Convention identifies four reasons for torture, namely: 1 to obtain a confession; 2 to obtain information; 3 to punish; 4 to coerce the sufferer or others to act in certain ways. Certainly, these are all possible purposes of torture, as is torture performed for sadistic pleasure. For with respect to each one of these four purposes, it is not the case that in general torture is undertaken for that purpose, e.

In the case of interrogatory torture of an enemy spy, for example, in order to obtain the desired information the torturer must first break the will of the victim. Hence torture as punishment does not consist — as do other forms of punishment — of a determinate set of specific, pre-determined and publicly known acts administered over a definite and limited time period.

A second consideration is as follows. Consider the torture victim who holds out and refuses to confess or provide the information sought by the torturer. So perhaps the following definition is adequate. See also Bernstein Such self-abnegation might be the purpose of some forms of torture, as indeed it is of some forms of slavery and brainwashing, but it is certainly not definitive of torture.

Consider victims of torture who are able to resist so that their wills are not broken. Siddy Atkinson was pretty fit then and gave him a terrible hiding…. Again, consider the famous case of Steve Biko who it seems was prepared to die rather than allow his torturers to break his will Arnold —2.

This is not to say that the boundaries between these two senses can be sharply drawn. By torturing the thief the police might break his will and, against his will, cause him to disclose the whereabouts of the stolen goods. Smith ends up willingly betraying what is dearest and most important to him, i. For example, some victims of prolonged torture in prisons in authoritarian states are so psychologically damaged that even when released they are unable to function as normal adult persons, i. Given the above definition of torture elaborated in Miller and , we can distinguish torture from the following practices.

Firstly, we need to distinguish torture from coercion. As this example shows, coercion does not necessarily involve the infliction of physical suffering or threat thereof. So coercion does not necessarily involve torture. Nor does coercion, which does involve the infliction of physical suffering as a means, necessarily constitute torture.

Consider, for example, a South African police officer in the days of apartheid who used a cattle prodder which delivers an electric shock on contact as a means of controlling an unruly crowd of South African blacks. On the other hand, if — as also evidently took place in apartheid South Africa — a person was tied to a chair and thereby rendered defenceless, and then subjected to repeated electric shocks from a cattle prodder this would constitute torture.

Does torture necessarily involve coercion? No doubt the threat of torture, and torture in its preliminary stages, simply functions as a form of coercion in this sense.

However, torture proper has as its starting point the failure of coercion, or that coercion is not even going to be attempted. As we have seen, torture proper targets autonomy itself, and seeks to overwhelm the capacity of the victims to exercise rational control over their decisions — at least in relation to certain matters for a limited period of time — by literally terrorising them into submission.

Hence there is a close affinity between terrorism and torture. Indeed, arguably torture is a terrorist tactic. However, it is one that can be used by groups other than terrorists, e.

In relation to the claim that torture is not coercion, it might be responded that at least some forms or instances of torture involve coercion, namely those in which the torturer is seeking something from the victim, e. This response is plausible. However, even if the response is accepted, there will remain instances of torture in which these above-mentioned conditions do not obtain; presumably, these will not be instances of coercion.

Secondly, torture needs to be distinguished from excruciatingly painful medical procedures. These kinds of case differ from torture in a number of respects. Thirdly, there is corporal punishment. Moreover, unlike torture, corporal punishment will normally consist of a determinate set of specific, pre-determined and publicly known acts administered during a definite and limited time period, e.

Fourthly, there are ordeals involving the infliction of severe pain. Consider Gordon Liddy who reportedly held his hand over a burning candle till his flesh burnt in order to test his will. Moreover, ordeals — as the Liddy example illustrates — can be voluntary, unlike torture. Having provided ourselves with an analytic account of torture and distinguished torture from some closely related practices, we need to turn now to the question, What is Wrong with Torture?

In terms of the above definition of torture there are at least two things that are inherently morally wrong with torture. Firstly, torture consists in part in the intentional infliction of severe physical suffering — typically, severe pain; that is, torture hurts very badly.

For this reason alone, torture is an evil thing. Secondly, torture of human beings consists in part in the intentional, substantial curtailment of individual autonomy. Given the moral importance of autonomy, torture is an evil thing — even considered independently of the physical suffering it involves. Nevertheless, there is some dispute about how great an evil torture is relative to other great evils, specifically killing and murder.

Many have suggested that torture is a greater evil than killing or even murder. Certainly, torturing an innocent person to death is worse than murder, for it involves torture in addition to murder. On the other hand, torture does not necessarily involve killing, let alone murder, and indeed torturers do not necessarily have the power of life and death over their victims.

Consider police officers whose superiors turn a blind eye to their illegal use of torture, but who do not, and could not, cover-up the murder of those tortured; the infliction of pain in police cells can be kept secret, but not the existence of dead bodies.

First, torture is similar to killing in that both interrupt and render impossible the normal conduct of human life, albeit the latter — but not the former — necessarily forever. Indeed, given the extreme suffering being experienced and the consequent loss of autonomy, the victim would presumably rather be dead than alive during that period.

So, as already noted, torture is a very great evil. However, it does not follow from this that being killed is preferable to being tortured. Nor does it follow that torturing someone is morally worse than killing him. For the same reason it does not follow that torturing a person is morally worse than killing that person. If the harm brought about by an act of torture is a lesser evil than the harm done by an act of killing then, other things being equal, the latter is morally worse than the former.

A second point pertains to the powerlessness of the victims of torture. Dead people necessarily have no autonomy or power; so killing people is an infringement of their right to autonomy as well as their right to life.

The person being tortured is for the duration of the torturing process physically powerless in relation to the torturer. Perhaps the terrorist could negotiate the cessation of torture and immunity for himself, if he talks. Consider also a situation in which both a hostage and his torturer know that it is only a matter of an hour before the police arrive, free the hostage and arrest the torturer; perhaps the hostage is a defence official who is refusing to disclose the whereabouts of important military documents and who is strengthened in his resolve by this knowledge of the limited duration of the pain being inflicted upon him.

The conclusion to be drawn from these considerations is that torture is not necessarily morally worse than killing or more undesirable than death , though in many instances it may well be.

Killing is an infringement of the right to life and the right to autonomy. Torture is an infringement of the right to autonomy, but not necessarily of the right to life. Let us now turn directly to the question of the moral justification for torture in extreme emergencies.

Here we must distinguish between one-off cases of torture, on the one hand, and legalised or institutionalised torture, on the other.

In this section one-off, non-institutionalised acts of torture performed by state actors in emergency situations are considered. The argument is that there are, or could well be, one-off acts of torture in extreme emergencies that are, all things considered, morally justifiable. Accordingly, the assumption is that the routine use of torture is not morally justified; so if it turned out that the routine use of torture was necessary to, say, win the war on terrorism, then some of what is said here would not be to the point.

The most obvious version of the argument in favour of one-off acts of torture in extreme emergencies is consequentialist in form. For example, Bagaric and Clarke 29 offer a version of the ticking bomb scenario in the context of their hedonistic act utilitarian theoretical perspective. A standard objection to this kind of appeal to consequentialism is that it licenses far too much: torture of a few innocent victims may well be justified, on this account, if it provides intense pleasure for a much larger number of sadists.

As it happens, Bagaric and Clarke insist that they want to restrict the practice of torture; only the guilty are to be subjected to torture and only for the purpose of extracting information. However it is far from clear how this desired restriction can be reconciled with consequentialism in any of its various permutations, let alone the relatively permissive version favoured by Bagaric and Clarke. Why, for example, should torture be restricted to the guilty, if torturing a small number of innocent persons would enable the lives of many other innocents to be saved as presumably it might.

Again, why should under-resourced Indian police not torture — as they often do in reality — a repeat offender responsible for a very large number of property crimes, if this proves to be the only available efficient and effective form of retrieving the stolen property in question and, thereby, securing the conviction of this offender, reducing property crime and making a large number of property owners happy?

The essential problem confronted by consequentialists participating in the torture debate is that their theoretically admissible moral barriers to torture are relatively flimsy; too flimsy, it seems, to accommodate the strong moral intuitions in play.

But see Arrigo However, their moral absolutism is not without its own problems: specifically, in relation to torturing the guilty few for the purpose of saving the innocent many. See Walzer , Miller ; Kershnar and Steinhoff Before turning in detail to the arguments on this issue, let us consider some putative examples of the justified use of torture.

The first is a policing example, the second a terrorist example. Arguably, both examples are realistic, albeit the terrorist ticking bomb scenario is often claimed by moral absolutists to be utterly fanciful. Certainly, the policing example is realistic; indeed, it was provided by a former police officer from his own experience. So is it entirely fanciful that there could be such an attack and that an Al Qaeda operative known on the basis of intercepted communications to be a member of the cell involved in the planned attack might not be arrested, interrogated and tortured?

At any rate, these are the two most popular kinds of example discussed in the literature. These cases include the real-life Daschner case involving the threat to torture a kidnapper by German police in which resulted in the kidnapper disclosing the location of a kidnapped child Miller Consider the following case study: Height of the antipodean summer, Mercury at the century-mark; the noonday sun softened the bitumen beneath the tyres of her little Hyundai sedan to the consistency of putty.

Her three year old son, quiet at last, snuffled in his sleep on the back seat. He had a summer cold and wailed like a banshee in the supermarket, forcing her to cut short her shopping.

Her car needed petrol. Her tot was asleep on the back seat. She poured twenty litres into the tank; thumbing notes from her purse, harried and distracted, her keys dangled from the ignition.

Whilst she was in the service station a man drove off in her car. The technique also has a corrosive impact on organisations, increasing brutality and resistance to democratic oversight.

Finally, torture is detrimental to intelligence per se, as it breaks social networks, undermines non-coercive collection, diverts effort from more reliable methods of interrogation, taints the public perception of intelligence and hampers efforts to build alliances. Thus, as there is no ethical justification for the practice nor proof of its unparalleled effectiveness, much on the contrary, there should be an absolute legal ban on torture.

Banham, Cynthia. Hart Publishing, Bellaby, Ross W. Duke, Misty C. Duke, Misty, and Damien Van Puyvelde. Erskine, Toni. Moral Agents and Intelligence Gathering. Evans, Rebecca. Feinstein, Dianne, and United States. Select Committee on Intelligence.

Book, Whole. Forsythe, David P. Freeman, Colin. Gutting, Gary, and Jeff Mcmahan. Hassner, Ron E. Isikoff, Michael. Masters, James. Mayer, Jane. United Nations. Quinlan, Michael. The Bush administration worries that such restrictions may undermine efforts to secure vital information from detainees in the war against terrorism.

Senator Bond R-Missouri also supports the Cheney amendment. He points out that the Army Field Manual is a public document, which terrorists can and do read.

He believes the prisoner abuse scandals have tarnished the image of the United States, which has always supported democratic values and the rule of law. What do they mandate regarding the treatment of prisoners? What people do they protect? How does U. The Bybee memo contained a number of controversial positions not mentioned in the article. One was that the president did not have to follow the law against torture. The memo argued that as commander in chief, the president—not Congress or the courts—had sole authority over the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants.

Why might this authority be helpful in the war against terror? What dangers might it pose? Do you think this part of the memo is correct? Do you think there are any circumstances that would justify torture? Why or why not? If so, explain the circumstances. Do you think the absolute ban on torture should remain? What is the McCain bill? What is its purpose? What is the amendment to this bill that Vice President Cheney favors?

In this activity, students role play members of Congress and decide whether to support the McCain proposal or the Cheney amendment. Form small groups. Each group will play the role of a congressional committee that is studying the question above. Discuss the McCain and Cheney proposals.

Then take a committee vote on which one, if any, to recommend. If the committee splits on the question, prepare a majority and minority report. Each committee should then report its recommendation and reasons to the other committees.

After all committees have reported, identify and debate the best arguments for each proposal. Take a vote on which proposal Congress should enact into law. Background on Torture. Encarta: Torture. Wikipedia: Torture. Google Directory: Torture. Open Directory Project: Torture. Yahoo Directory: Torture. Law on Torture and Degrading Treatment. Encarta: Geneva Conventions. Wikipedia: Geneva Conventions. Columbia Encyclopedia: Geneva Conventions. Google Directory: Geneva Conventions. Yahoo Directory: Geneva Conventions.

Wikipedia: Convention Against Torture. Convention Against Torture. Google Directory: Convention Against Torture. Uniform Code of Military Justice Text of the code. Field Manual Wikipedia: Ticking time bomb scenario An explanation of the scenario.