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Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties.
Some definitions restrict torture to acts carried out by the state, while others include non-state organizations. Most victims of torture are poor and marginalized people suspected of crimes, although torture against political prisoners, or during armed conflict, has received disproportionate attention. Judicial corporal punishment and capital punishment are sometimes seen as forms of torture, but this label is internationally controversial. A variety of methods of torture are used, often in combination; the most common form of physical torture is beatings. Beginning in the twentieth century, many torturers have preferred non-scarring or psychological methods to maintain deniability.
Torturers more commonly act out of fear, or due to limited resources, rather than sadomasochism. Although most torturers are thought to learn about torture techniques informally and rarely receive explicit orders, they are enabled by organizations that facilitate and encourage their behavior. Once a torture program begins, it usually escalates beyond what is intended initially and often leads to involved agencies losing effectiveness. Torture aims to break the victim's will, destroy their agency and personality, and is cited as one of the most damaging experiences that a person can undergo. Many victims suffer both physical damage—chronic pain is particularly common—and mental sequelae. Although torture survivors have some of the highest rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, many are psychologically resilient.
Torture has been carried out since ancient times. However, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many Western countries abolished the official use of torture in the judicial system, although it continued to be used throughout the world. Public opinion research shows general opposition to torture. It is prohibited under international law for all states Peremptory norm and is explicitly forbidden by several treaties. Opposition to torture stimulated the formation of the human rights movement after World War II, and it continues to be an important human rights issue. Although prevention efforts have been of mixed effectiveness, institutional reforms and the elimination of incommunicado detention have had positive effects. Despite its decline, torture is still practiced in or by most countries.
Torture was rare in early medieval Europe but became more common between 1200 and 1400. Because medieval judges used an exceptionally high standard of proof, they would sometimes authorize torture when circumstantial evidence tied a person to a capital crime if there were fewer than the two eyewitnesses required to convict someone in the absence of a confession. Torture was still a labor-intensive process reserved for the most severe crimes; most torture victims were men accused of murder, treason, or theft. Medieval ecclesiastical courts and the Inquisition used torture under the same procedural rules as secular courts. The Ottoman Empire and Qajar Iran used torture in cases where circumstantial evidence tied someone to a crime, although Islamic law has traditionally considered evidence obtained under torture to be inadmissible.
Torture was widely used by colonial powers to subdue resistance and reached a peak during the anti-colonial wars in the twentieth century. An estimated 300,000 people were tortured during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), and the United Kingdom and Portugal also used torture in attempts to retain their respective empires. Independent states in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia often used torture in the twentieth century, but it is unknown whether their use of torture increased or decreased compared to nineteenth-century levels. During the first half of the twentieth century, torture became more prevalent in Europe with the advent of secret police, World War I and World War II, and the rise of communist state and fascist states.
Torture was also used by both communist and anti-communist governments during the Cold War in Latin America, with an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 victims of torture by United States–backed regimes. The only countries in which torture was rare during the twentieth century were the liberal democracies of the West, but torture was still used there, against ethnic minorities or criminal suspects from marginalized classes, and during overseas wars against foreign populations. After the September 11 attacks, the US government embarked on an overseas torture program as part of its war on terror. It is disputed whether torture increases, decreases, or remains constant.
are used in the 21st-century as a means to torture detainees, including by the CIA.
Although liberal democracies are less likely to abuse their citizens, they may practice torture against marginalized citizens and non-citizens to whom they are not democratically accountable. Voters may support violence against out-groups seen as threatening; majoritarian institutions are ineffective at preventing torture against minorities or foreigners. Torture is more likely when a society feels threatened because of wars or crises, but studies have not found a consistent relationship between the use of torture and terrorist attacks.
Torture is directed against certain segments of the population, who are denied the protection against torture given to others. Torture of political prisoners and torture during armed conflicts receive more attention compared to torture of the poor or criminal suspects. Most victims of torture are suspected of crimes; a disproportionate number of victims are from poor or marginalized communities. Groups especially vulnerable to torture include unemployed young men, the urban poverty, LGBT people, refugees and migrants, ethnic and racial minorities, indigenous people, and people with disabilities. Relative poverty and the resulting inequality in particular leave poor people vulnerable to torture. Criminalization of the poor, through laws targeting homelessness, sex work, or working in the informal economy, can lead to violent and arbitrary policing. Routine violence against poor and marginalized people is often not seen as torture, and its perpetrators justify the violence as a legitimate policing tactic; victims lack the resources or standing to seek redress.
Although it is often assumed that torture is ordered from above at the highest levels of government, sociologist Jonathan Luke Austin argues that government authorization is a necessary but not sufficient condition for torture to occur, given that a specific order to torture rarely can be identified. In many cases, a combination of dispositional and situational effects lead a person to become a torturer. In most cases of systematic torture, the torturers were desensitized to violence by being exposed to physical or psychological abuse during training which can be a deliberate tactic to create torturers. Even when not explicitly ordered by the government to torture, perpetrators may feel peer pressure due to competitive masculinity. Elite and specialized police units are especially prone to torturing, perhaps because of their tight-knit nature and insulation from oversight. Although some torturers are formally trained, most are thought to learn about torture techniques informally.
Torture can be a side effect of a broken criminal justice system in which underfunding, lack of judicial independence, or corruption undermines effective investigations and . In this context, people who cannot afford bribes are likely to become victims of torture. Understaffed or poorly trained police are more likely to resort to torture when interrogating suspects. In some countries, such as Kyrgyzstan, suspects are more likely to be tortured at the end of the month because of performance quotas.
The contribution of bureaucracy to torture is under-researched and poorly understood. Torturers rely on both active supporters and those who ignore it. Military, intelligence, psychology, medical, and legal professionals can all be complicit in torture. Incentives can favor the use of torture on an institutional or individual level, and some perpetrators are motivated by the prospect of career advancement. Bureaucracy can diffuse responsibility for torture and help perpetrators excuse their actions. Maintaining secrecy is often essential to maintaining a torture program, which can be accomplished in ways ranging from direct censorship, denial, or mislabeling torture as something else, to offshoring abuses to outside a state's territory. Along with official denials, torture is enabled by moral disengagement from the victims and impunity for the perpetrators. Public demand for decisive action against crime or even support for torture against criminals can facilitate its use.
Once a torture program is begun, it is difficult or impossible to prevent it from escalating to more severe techniques and expanding to larger groups of victims, beyond what is originally intended or desired by decision-makers. Sociologist Christopher J. Einolf argues that "torture can create a vicious cycle in which a fear of internal enemy leads to torture, torture creates , and false confessions reinforce torturers' fears, leading to a spiral of paranoia and ever-increasing torture"—similar to a witch hunt. Escalation of torture is especially difficult to contain in counterinsurgency operations. Torture and specific techniques spread between different countries, especially by soldiers returning home from overseas wars, although this process is poorly understood.
The classification of judicial corporal punishment as torture is internationally controversial, although it is explicitly prohibited under the Geneva Conventions. Some authors, such as John D. Bessler, argue that capital punishment is inherently a form of torture carried out for punishment. Executions may be carried out in brutal ways, such as stoning, death by burning, or dismemberment. The psychological harm of capital punishment is sometimes considered a form of psychological torture. Others do not consider corporal punishment with a fixed penalty to be torture, as it does not seek to break the victim's will.
Beatings or blunt trauma are the most common form of physical torture reported by about two-thirds of survivors. They may be either unsystematic or focused on a specific part of the body, as in Foot whipping (the soles of the feet), repeated strikes against both ears, or shaking the detainee so that their head moves back and forth. Often, people are suspended in painful positions such as strappado or upside-down hanging in combination with beatings. People may also be subjected to stabbings or , have their Denailing, or body parts amputated. Burns are also common, especially cigarette burns, but other instruments are also employed, including hot metal, hot fluids, the sun, or Chemical burn. Forced ingestion of water, force feeding, or other substances, or injections are also used as torture. Electric shocks are often used to torture, especially to avoid other methods that are more likely to leave scars. Asphyxiation, of which waterboarding is a form, inflicts torture on the victim by cutting off their air supply.
Psychological torture includes methods that involve no physical element as well as forcing a person to do something and physical attacks that ultimately target the mind. , mock execution, or being forced to witness the torture of another person are often reported to be subjectively worse than being physically tortured and are associated with severe sequelae. Other torture techniques include sleep deprivation, overcrowding or solitary confinement, withholding of food or water, sensory deprivation (such as hooding), exposure to extremes of light or noise (e.g., musical torture), humiliation (which can be based on sexuality or the victim's religious or national identity), and the use of animals such as dogs to frighten or injure a prisoner. Positional torture works by forcing the person to adopt a stance, putting their weight on a few muscles, causing pain without leaving marks, for example standing or squatting for extended periods. Rape and sexual assault are universal torture methods and frequently instill a permanent sense of shame in the victim and in some cultures, humiliate their family and society. Cultural and individual differences affect how the victim perceives different torture methods.
Death is not an uncommon outcome of torture. Understanding of the link between specific torture methods and health consequences is lacking. These consequences can include peripheral neuropathy, damage to teeth, rhabdomyolysis from extensive muscle damage, traumatic brain injury, sexually transmitted infection, and pregnancy from rape. Chronic pain and pain-related disability are commonly reported, but there is scant research into this effect or possible treatments. Common psychological problems affecting survivors include traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbance. An average of 40 percent have long-term post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a higher rate than for any other traumatic experience. Not all survivors or rehabilitation experts support using medical categories to define their experience, and many survivors remain psychologically resilient.
Criminal prosecutions for torture are rare and most victims who submit formal complaints are not believed. Despite the efforts for evidence-based evaluation of the scars from torture such as the Istanbul Protocol, most physical examinations are inconclusive. The effects of torture are one of several factors that usually result in inconsistent testimony from survivors, hampering their effort to be believed and secure either refugee status in a foreign country or criminal prosecution of the perpetrators.
Although there is less research on the effects of torture on perpetrators, they can experience moral injury or trauma symptoms similar to the victims, especially when they feel guilty about their actions. Torture has corrupting effects on the institutions and societies that perpetrate it. Torturers forget important investigative skills because torture can be an easier way than time-consuming police work to achieve high conviction rates, encouraging the continued and increased use of torture. Public disapproval of torture can harm the international reputation of countries that use it, strengthen and radicalize violent opposition to those states, and encourage adversaries to themselves use torture.
Torture stimulated the creation of the human rights movement. In 1969, the Greek case was the first time that an international body—the European Commission on Human Rights—found that a state practiced torture and it, along with Ireland v. United Kingdom, formed much of the basis for the definition of torture in international law. In the early 1970s, Amnesty International launched a global campaign against torture, exposing its widespread use despite international prohibition and eventually leading to the United Nations Convention against Torture (CAT) in 1984. Successful civil society mobilizations against torture can prevent its use by governments that possess both motive and opportunity to use torture. Naming and shaming campaigns against torture have shown mixed results; they can be ineffective and even make things worse.
The prohibition of torture is a peremptory norm ( jus cogens) in international law, meaning that it is forbidden for all states under all circumstances. Most jurists justify the absolute legal prohibition on torture based on its violation of human dignity. The CAT and its Optional Protocol focus on the prevention of torture, which was already prohibited in international human rights law under other treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The CAT specifies that torture must be a criminal offense under a country's laws, evidence obtained under torture may not be admitted in court, and deporting a person to another country where they are likely to face torture non-refoulement. Even when it is illegal under national law, judges in many countries continue to admit evidence obtained under torture or ill treatment. It is disputed whether ratification of the CAT decreases, does not affect, or even increases the rate of torture in a country.
In international humanitarian law, which regulates the conduct of war, torture was first outlawed by the 1863 Lieber Code. Torture was prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials as a crime against humanity; it is recognized by both the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as a war crime. According to the Rome Statute, torture can also be a crime against humanity if committed as part of a systematic attack on a civilian population. In 1987, Israel became the only country in the world to purportedly legalize torture.
Sociologically torture operates as a subculture, frustrating prevention efforts because torturers can find a way around rules. Safeguards against torture in detention can be evaded by beating suspects during round-ups or on the way to the police station. General training of police to improve their ability to investigate crime has been more effective at reducing torture than specific training focused on human rights. Institutional police reforms have been effective when abuse is systematic. Political scientist Darius Rejali criticizes torture prevention research for not figuring out "what to do when people are bad; institutions broken, understaffed, and corrupt; and habitual serial violence is routine".
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