Okay, well no, torture is not moral, but my question is whether or not it can be. We talked extensively about torture as coercive means to information, but we did not touch so much on torture as a punishment. I alluded to such a proposition in my précis, but I want to hear more about how you all feel on this topic. Undeniably, torture fails to pull reliable information from its victims, who may or may not be innocent. As a means of punishment however, its effects may be more realizable. This all seems barbaric to me, but how far would this be from something like solitary confinement, life without parole, or the death penalty? The death penalty has been questioned on numerous occasions, but primarily because of the extensive wait on death row, coupled with the high costs of the litigation that is mandated. Lastly, the death penalty has resulted in innocent persons put to death, which is an utter atrocity. However, these are all failures of the system, not of the principle of violating a human's basic right. The system needs to be fixed, but the question of proper punishment still will arise again and again.
If a man rapes and kills a woman and her three children over the course of seven months, as her husband is forced to watch the entire thing, all of which he videotaped, what is the proper punishment for such a crime? Not only are there four people dead, there is a survivor who is probably worse off than most living humans. How can this man pay for his crimes? Or should we try to rehabilitate him? This is a topic worthy of another post, but, we are typically a retributive society which aims to punish more than it rehabilitates (which I personally think is a crime in itself), but even if we were a rehabilitating society, I doubt this man would qualify. So what should we do? Put him to death, life without parole, mental ward? I obviously do not have the answer, but why not chop off his extremities one by one over the course of a year, and let it be know what is being done….as a deterrent for all others. I do not believe that he has any rights at this point, so everything is fair game in my eyes (and this seems to be my main point, can one forgo all human rights if she/he steals a certain amount of others' rights?). Can one contract away one's life or rights, ever?
Undoubtedly though, the objection of torturers will be raised: we cannot have people in our society who we accept who would have to do the torturing. I would suggest robots…..something right before the valley of the uncanny.
This all makes me sick…..but the message "In Texas, they kill you back" always comes to mind. There is no significant decrease in murders there, and this may be due to failures in the system, or perhaps we cannot deter crime…….I just do not know. It seems like there must be a way to do a better job than jailing more people per capita than any other country in the world (while still retaining some of the highest crime rates).
An interesting (and controversial) post
ReplyDeleteI have a couple problems with using torture (for any purpose). First, torture is the textbook definition of cruel and unusual punishment. Using it as a means of learning information is disgusting but using it as punishment is even more depraved. If you believe that torture should be used as a deterrent then you must support public hangings, beheadings, etc. (French Revolution style)
Using torture as a deterrent is not an excuse for, as you put it, “cutting off his extremities one by one.” Such actions are barbaric and inexcusable. I would love to see someone attempt to defend the disembowelment of convicted felons. That would be an entertaining post
You are right in saying that something is wrong with our penal system. We imprison an enormous number of individuals and see no real decrease in violent crimes committed. However, that does not give us the right to mutilate a person (no matter how serious the crime or how definitively we can prove their guilt)
Today in class when the question was posed "Why don't we rape rapists?", it seemed like we boiled that answer down to the fact that rape is an action that we find morally repugnant, and we cannot have a justice system that allows rape as a punishment for rape. However, the issue of torture is a bit stickier, and one that a lot of people are okay with as a form of interrogation, in order to elicit crucial information that will hopefully save the lives of others, but not as a form of punishment. I just don't think people could strongly morally justify using torture as a punishment.
ReplyDeleteI also don't buy the idea that torture or the death penalty are a deterent for crime. Crime rates show that crime does not decrease in states that administer capital punishment. People who oppose the death penalty typically oppose it from a moral standpoint, and that moral standpoint could not possibly allow torture either.
Also interesting is that our constitution prohibits the use of cruel and unusual punishment, so torture could actually never be used. But with that, I think that solitary should be taken off the books. As well as jail sentences for simple possession... the fact that we jail persons (up to life sentences) for having a drug that has no affect on other persons is tantamount to torturing the rapists.
ReplyDeleteNeither deserve the punishment, and the latter is morally repugnant, but the former is violating basic human rights that the person did not reciprocate to another individual.
This suggestion- slow torture as a deterrent to others- would simply not serve this purpose. If I lived in that country, I think I would just leave. But then again, I feel about the same way about the government putting people to death, so I don't know. If this guy were being tortured on television, it would just serve to demoralize the people of the country (ie- you could turn on the tv and see hard evidence of the cruelty of people everyday, become numb to it, and eventually refer to that as justification for doing terrible things to other people). I agree, there must be a better way to deal with these issues than to put everyone in prison, but I don't think torture holds the key.
ReplyDeleteI would have to agree with the calls to reform many aspects of our penal codes. Take for example the drug schedules that were created during the Nixon administration. Most of the classifications were based on drug attributes like potential of abuse, medicinal value, and risk of use.
ReplyDeleteHowever, with the politically charged nature of Nixon's war on drugs, there are many glaring inconsistencies. Most of these concern the drugs that were most prominent in the counterculture of the 1960's, and consequently became the fixation of Nixon's crusade.
Thus, drugs like LSD, psilocybin (active ingredient in shrooms), marijuana, ibogaine and others were placed in the most restrictive class - Schedule I.
But now we know that LSD can be potentially used to treat things like cluster headaches. Ibogaine and psilocybin have proven to have interesting abilities to stifle the cravings of addiction, and marijuana has a plethora of medical uses.
So why not reform the system if not just for the medical benefits, then to relive the strain on our penal system.