#rejali

Is it likely that this faction would be able to succeed (replace the original faction and continue not torturing people)? How likely is this? What factors would impact the likelihood? Mostly I'm focusing on the contrast between one organization torturing and the other not torturing, e.g., I can see how locals might be skeptical of the second organization because they're on the same "side" as the torturers. (organizations ask 2/3 -- I think I might've accidentally numbered the first one 2/3, aah)  The organization uses torture for mainly punishment (which might include trying to get people to make false confessions) and intimidation (as well as in some cases in attempts to force compliance, like making people supply them with food and materials or making people give them information; this last is the rarest... oops, I just realized that's all of the purposes in the UN definition). (I have read a lot of your posts and I know torture doesn't work.) Thank you!! :) (organizations ask 3/3)

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Anon you are delightful.

 Rejali spends an awful lot of time discussing the various arguments on whether torture can be eradicated and how that could be practically done. There aren’t a lot of definite answers but I can give a summary of the kinds of factors that we think are important and describe things your characters could practically do.

 I think it’s worth stressing from the start that no country has completely eradicated torture. As a result we don’t know for certain what… works. Or at least not what works completely and permanently.

 I don’t think this means getting rid of torture is impossible. Neither does Rejali. Rejali argues (convincingly in my opinion) that torture has changed so drastically in the modern era because of concerted efforts to wipe it out. Part of that change has been an almost complete eradication of some torture techniques. As a general rule people are no longer broken on the wheel, hanged drawn and quartered or have their flesh torn off with red hot pincers. We have already completely transformed both torture and public attitudes to it.

 And that implies that we can get it rid of it.

 It’s likely that torture is less common now then it was historically but this is hard to prove. Most historical records don’t provide a clear indication of every single person who was questioned, arrested or tried, let alone who was tortured or how.

 It’s also hard to prove exactly how much a particular factor reduces torture. The fact torture is illegal and that victims may not report what happened to them make it difficult to measure how often it occurs. We rely on estimates based on the reporting we have, which is likely to give a lower figure then the real number of cases. (Because we know from more thorough studies on other crimes that there is always a proportion that goes unreported and it is likely this proportion will be higher when the victim could face repercussions for reporting the crime. As is often the case with torture.)

 So what seems to help? I’ll start by talking about the factors we’re aware of that can reduce torture and then I’ll try to talk about how you might be able to apply them to the revolutionary organisation in your story.

 It might sound obvious but making torture illegal is usually a necessary first step.

 A change in the law in and of itself does not really do much. Especially not overnight. It’s about beginning to build a framework where reporting can happen and where people are actively looking for evidence of torture.

 The next steps are well building up that framework. Independent oversight is one of the biggest things.

 Here are a couple of things that can mean:

Anonymous reporting

Independent inspections

Regular unscheduled inspections

Independent medical reports and autopsies

Treating reports of torture seriously

Thorough investigation of all reports

Prosecution of torturers where there is sufficient evidence

Sentencing that fits the gravity of the crime*

Suspension of individuals accused of torture

 I tend to think of those factors as things that are sort of outside the organisation. Because ideally they’re coming from outside the organisation.

 Note that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re outside the system entirely. Using a comparison if you’re trying to stop police torture then the people handling reports, investigations etc could still be government employees but they should not be police. When the people in charge of torture investigations rely on the people they’re investigating for their jobs and wages… you get problems.

 There are also important factors within the organisation. Which are about building an organisation where torture is less likely to occur (whereas the factors outside the organisation are about rooting it out when it’s found.)

 A lot of these things basically boil down to building a positive working environment:

High quality training for all personnel

Regular refresher training with updates to training as appropriate

Appropriate staffing levels (ie there should always be enough people to easily run the organisation)

No one is forced to work overtime

Generous holiday allowance and sick pay

Consistent effort to structure and manage things to reduce stress in the workplace

Reasonable, achievable goals for staff

Appropriate, well supplied facilities

Thorough record keeping for staff and anyone they are responsible for

Avoidance of shifts that disrupt sleep as much as possible

 Torture is much, much less likely when staff are correctly trained, supported and given the resources necessary to do their jobs.

 There are also a handful of things that would probably help and fall into neither category such as limiting (or eliminating) access to devices commonly used to torture. For instance Tasers, pepper spray, particular forms of restraints but also (depending on where in the world we are) chilli powder, hose pipes and cleaning supplies.

 This might seem like quite a lot but it’s funny how much of it applies to the industry I actually work in: drugs testing.

 The place I work is regularly inspected by outside organisations (and usually without notice). Every single person on site has to go through extensive training programs which are refreshed at least once a year. Each and every one of us has to record and account for all our actions and any material and equipment we use. We can report things anonymously. Any allegations of malpractice are dealt with swiftly and prompt massive investigations.

 So I guess I’m saying that I think more of the organisations responsible for people should have the same level of accountability pharmaceutical testing does.

 Depending on the structure of your rebel organisation and what’s available too them a lot of this might not be possible. At least not at first.

 A small, poorly supplied organisation could struggle to combat torture effectively. But where there’s a will there’s a way.

 Size of the group seems to be a big thing here. With really small groups the members can often say pretty confidently whether torture is happening or not. Because they’re all working together so closely that they know more or less everything their colleagues are doing. But the bigger a group becomes the easier it is to lose track of people and for abuse to be hidden.

 My instinct is that genuinely independent oversight probably becomes easier after organisations reach a certain size. Because for a smaller (but not tiny) group anyone who might be investigating accusations could still be reliant on the people they’re investigating. They’re likely to work together, be close to each other and as a result they’re bringing a bias into any investigation.

 I think a smaller, newly founded organisation would really struggle to set up the kind of structured, independent inspection bodies that do most of the grunt work of finding and reporting on torture. Especially early on when they’ve just split off from the older, more established group.

 That’s partly because of numbers and partly because it takes time and expertise to set up these systems. Or at least to do it well. Going back to the comparison with my work, the organisations that inspect and audit my workplace have all been around for decades. Most of the ‘younger’ organisations are mergers or rebrands of much older organisations. The process is updated at least once a year and there is a labyrinth of laws around every single aspect of… well all of it.

 It takes a lot of time, energy and error to build that up in a robust way.

 But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing they can do.

 They might not be able to detect or investigate torture easily in the early stages but they could structure their organisation in ways that make it less likely for torture to happen in the first place.

 Proper training is probably the biggest one that would make a difference. Things like conducting a proper investigation or interrogation, de-escalation tactics, building rapport/people skills and negotiation.

 They could also limit the number of prisoners they hold and the length of time prisoners are held for. This is trickier to do ethically in a combat situation. If part of the point is that this group is more ethical they shouldn’t be maiming or summarily executing surrendering troops from the opposing side. They also shouldn’t be releasing prisoners in places they’re likely to die.

 One potential way around this is to focus on destroying equipment and facilities rather then ending lives. Taking weapons, destroying barracks, supply lines and the like.

 Captured enemy troops can potentially give out valuable information (you can read about effective interrogation here) but the majority of useful information doesn’t come from interrogating suspects/enemy troops in these scenarios. It comes from people volunteering information, whether they’re civilians or defectors.

 It might sound really obvious but a very easy way to avoid torture as an issue to not have anyone to torture. A policy of no prisoners, not in the sense of killing everyone but in the sense of immediate release after the goal has been achieved, reduces the amount of people held and hence the chance of torture.

 This sort of strategy in the beginning could give the organisation time to come up with the facilities, training program and inspection regime needed to keep prisoners in… as safe and ethical a way as possible. It would mean adopting a strategy of ambush style attacks on the facilities and supply lines of he opposing side/s.

 It would also help avoid overcrowding of any prison facilities which is a factor that leads to more violence in prisons.

 I think that just leaves the question of long term success which you’ve defined in terms of avoiding torture and eventually replacing the rebel group that tortures.

 That isn’t a question I can give a definitive ‘yes or no’ answer to. It depends on a lot of factors, as you can probably see from the lists above.

 My instinct is that it is possible. However it would take time. A lot of time. And it would mean keeping up that dedication, the rejection of torture, throughout.

 Supplanting an existing organisation would take years. Easily 5-10 years, and I think I might actually be under estimating things. It also depends on things like how well known both rebel groups are, how well they manage to build up public trust, the supply of recruits, the amount of territory they occupy.

 Part of what I’m driving at here is that doing things well, building systems and organisations that last and keep ethics at their core; it takes time. It takes hard work. And a lot of it feels thankless.

 In the early days your rebels will probably be bending over backwards, making life so much ‘harder’ for themselves in order to avoid torture. Only to have civilians turn around and mistake them for the group that tortures.

 The sad fact is that a lot of people feel destruction is more satisfying. It feels like ‘doing something’, whereas the hard work of building a better system over years/decades… it often feels like you’re getting nowhere. I think that, along with the cultural message that violence ‘works’, is why a lot of these abuses continue to happen.

 Once again I think that what you want from this story is possible. But it isn’t simple, it isn’t easy. It’s playing the long game. And there will be times when that grinds the characters down.

 A lot of stories say that ‘doing the right thing isn’t easy’ and then proceed to show the characters doing some big, impressive act that instantly solves everything. This is a fallacy. Sometimes it’s a fallacy that leads to some great stories! But it’s still a fictional motif that romanticises acts of violence over the hard work of building something better.

 And I think that if you want to show that hard work in your story you can’t gloss over the fact that it’s hard. It’s exhausting, it can be isolating. It can all be wiped away at any moment because of one hot-headed idiot.

 But the hard work and dedication would eventually pay off.

 These rebels would end up with better intelligence networks, better ties to the local communities and a better reputation. Which would probably lead to them becoming the go-to group for defectors, both from the other rebels and the group they’re trying to fight. They’d also probably get more volunteers in the long term.

 Wrapping up I think I’ll end with a note from Kurlansky’s Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea: Long term victory generally goes to the group that is the most organised. Focus on that. Really think about inventive ways to set up the systems and organisations these rebels are trying to build.

 Follow those points through logically.

 Your group might not end up looking like any rebel group you’ve seen in media before. But it’ll probably look closer to a lot of real organisations and give you a lot of fodder for stories.

 I hope that helps :)

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So Darius Rejali, one of the world’s experts on torture (the guy I constantly quote) classifies torture in democracies as coming under three broad headings. Keep in mind this classification was primarily designed to help predict risk factors and prevent torture. Depending on what you’re writing and what your focus is this might or might not be helpful for your story.

 It should help give an idea of when states might use torture which can be helpful both for world building and working out whether your character is in a risky environment. I’m hoping to highlight structures as well as arguments that increase the chance of torture taking place.

 National Security Model

 Rejali characterises this as a conflict between bureaucratic and democratic (ie government) institutions.

 Let me try to unpack that rather dense statement a little bit.

 Countries have groups of public employees who are trained and can be thought of as experts in their field. Wherever you go countries almost uniformly have police organisations, military organisations, etc that are funded by (and nominally controlled by) elected officials but are not elected themselves.

 The National Security model is when the government loses control of one of these organisations of unelected officials.

 The typical pattern is that there is some kind of emergency situation. It could be an armed uprising, it could be an occupation of a volatile region, it could be a series of peaceful demonstrations. Police or military organisations in the area may be given greater powers in order to control the situation. Whether they are or not they argue that the law is holding them back. They could fix this emergency if they were just allowed to-

 Isolated from the elected officials and judicial systems that are supposed to control them they begin to torture. They also tend to systematically lie to and undermine the institutions that are supposed to police them.

 So could this apply to your story?

 Here are some of the central factors that contribute to the National Security Model.

 There's a state of emergency somewhere in your world.

 There's a degree of conflict, this doesn't have to mean a war but there has to be a sense of 'us and them' to the situation. Has a natural disaster in your world highlighted a huge gap between the poor affected by the disaster and rich? Are people protesting or rioting because they can't afford to buy basic foodstuffs? People working in the emergency zone may not be from the area, increasing the sense of 'us and them'.

 There's a separation between the people who are working in the emergency zone and the people who are supposed to oversee them. The people who are supposed to monitor the situation and prevent abuses are either unable or unwilling to restrain the police/military etc. There's widespread support within the groups working in the emergency zone for torture.

 There's a failure to combat torture at every possible level: higher ranking individuals working in the emergency zone condone it, the judicial system dismisses cases, the political system refuses to discipline or remove culprits, the press supports torture or refuses to report on it. There's an increasing gap between the groups on the ground in the emergency zone and their superiors outside it, the emergency zone becomes a sort of closed system with the organisations there behaving almost as a separate state.

 Think carefully about whether there are places or situations in your world that meet these criteria. They don't mean that torture will happen but they do make torture more likely.

 Juridical Model

 Of the three systems this is probably the most straightforward. When a justice system prizes confessions too highly it can result in cases of torture in custody.

 We respond oddly to confessions: studies suggest that we find them convincing even when they are contrary to evidence. Studies have also suggested that we find them convincing even when we know they’re false.

 It’s easy for people to believe in confessions.

 And compared to actual police work, processing and collecting evidence, weeks of surveillance and so forth, pressuring someone into confessing is easy too.

 Here are some of the factors that characterise the juridical model.

 The justice system in your world relies on confessions, or favours them. There’s a high rate of confession leading to conviction (anything over about 60%). Suspects can be detained for long periods (anything over a week or two). Suspects usually do not have lawyers with them throughout interviews (this can be due to policy, poverty or a shortage of lawyers). Crime is low and society is perceived to be orderly.

 If you think your world meets most of these criteria then the police could well be torturing suspects.

 Civic Discipline Model

 As the name implies this system is mostly based around policing. It happens when, for whatever reason, the state can't keep the peace in a particular area. Perhaps there aren't enough police officers, perhaps demand has risen faster than the police can keep up with, perhaps they're being directed away from certain areas because they're not a political priority.

 The result is an overt or tacit partnership between public officials and private organisations.

 In laymens terms this is torture targeted at people who are perceived as non-citizens or lesser citizens, people who are seen as potential or actual troublemakers. Street children, homeless adults, loitering teenagers, illegal immigrants.

 This is torture in the name of keeping the streets 'clean'.

 Here’s how Rejali describes it:

 'Our societies offer many finely graded distinctions between citizens, and some citizens soon discover they are not treated equally. These different civic experiences create different expectations and shape future behaviours. Some people expect torture, while others would be shocked to know it was happening here.' (Emphasis mine).

 There are quite a few social factors that feed into the Civic Discipline model and it has manifested slightly different in different cultures and areas. Here are some of the factors to consider when trying to work out if this could apply to your world and story.

 There's a lack of political will or resources in some, but not necessarily all, areas. Crime is not necessarily high but the fear of crime is high and the perception of the crime rate is high. Being seen as 'tough on crime' is a political necessity. The media and the public may respond negatively to officials who are seen as being 'soft' towards criminals, especially those who take torture allegations seriously. Public officials expect condemnation of torture will affect their career.

 There is a significant social hierarchy. Some groups, whether easily identified or not, are thought to be more 'troublesome' and more likely to break the law. Members of the public are either encouraged to take the law into their own hands or can reasonably expect their crimes will be overlooked if they do.

 Public officials can reasonably expect the public to ignore, doubt or be apathetic towards torture allegations. Private 'police', for instance armed security guards, outnumber public police. Police officers are under staffed, under paid and under funded but are under immense pressure to achieve grand and visible 'results', a situation which encourages corruption. 

 The chances are that these factors won't apply to the entire world in your story. While this system can occur in rural areas (especially large areas covered by very few police officers) Rejali mostly describes it in highly populated urban environments. Think about the cities in your world and especially the 'bad' areas within them. Think about whether the culture makes an overt distinction between the 'honest, hard working' poor and the 'undeserving' poor.

 Think about how afraid people your world are and what they might be willing to ignore for the sake of a feeling of security.

 Overall

 Torture can and does occur in places that aren't described by Rejali's Three Systems. This model was developed specifically to look at torture in democratic countries. They could still be useful to you if your world isn't a democracy but they all assume a degree of accountability: the systems assume that members of the public can, generally, complain about the behaviour of public officials.

 My aim with this post is to help you think about how structures and cultures create torture.

 I am not saying that if your world fits with any of these criteria you should include torture. My hope is to make authors more aware of what they're writing and what their world building could imply.

 If you've created a wonderfully detailed and realised city that fits a little too perfectly with the Civic Discipline model consider whether that implication fits with the story you're trying to tell.

 If you want to include torture in your story consider using some of these details in your world building.

 If you don’t want to include torture in your story consider avoiding them or mixing in additional details that show abusers are held accountable.

 You are the person who ultimately decides what your story and world need. I hope this helps you figure it out.

It’s an interestingquestion, at the moment we don’t know. There simply isn’t enough clear data tobe certain.

 There are some thingswe strongly suspect about howNational Styles can change that might help though:

 Rejali spends most ofhis book Torture and Democracybuilding an argument that the human rights movement and human rights monitoringfundamentally changed torture practices across the world. It’s a persuasiveargument. I personally am a sucker for that much data.

 The summary of Rejali’s800 pages is essentially that the human rights movement brought about a hugeshift in attitude world wide. This in turn caused a global change away from easily detected scarringtorture and towards types of torture that Rejali calls ‘clean’, which meansthey don’t leave external marks.

 We also saw a strong cross cultural shift in the past in Europe thatechoes this. A change in publicperception meant that most European countries abandoned whipping as amilitary punishment around the 1700s. Instead the militaries started usingforced exercise and stress positions to torture their troops.

 So public perception impacts torture.Things that are universally condemned by public opinion tend to vanish orchange so that they’re less visible.

 The other major thingthat seems to happen (and the evidence here is a lot sparser so this is morebest-guess territory) is innovation based on cultural contact.

 Most of France’s former colonies stillstick with techniques that are very much rooted in a French Style. The uniquestress positions in the French style haven’tbecome universally used but the combination of waterboarding and electricaltorture became the norm in manyformer French colonies, including Vietnam.

 I mention Vietnamspecifically because it’s possible that the American National Style, with itsheavy reliance on waterboarding and electrical torture, took at least some elements from Vietnam.

 This is by no meansproven. In the 1920s when the torture practices of the Chicago policedepartment were investigated they seemed to rely on sleep deprivation,beatings, temperature tortures and restraint tortures, along with relayinterrogation (essentially constantly switching interrogators and keeping theinterrogation going for 24+ hours without break for the victim). After theVietnam war a police force that was heavily staffed by veterans practicedbeatings, choking torture and electrical torture using the same method popularin Vietnam.

 It’s a stretch, but it’spossible that torture practices sometimes spread and change in this way. Theubiquity of falaka throughout areas that were once part of the Ottoman Empiremay be a better example, but it doesn’t seem to have been studied in as muchdetail as the shift in practices in the USA.

 And at the moment that’sthe extent of what we know on how practices change. I’ve never seen any data onhow they might form. I think it would be a very interesting project but somehowI don’t think it’s likely to get funded anytime soon.

 Where does that leaveyou trying to develop a National Style for a fictional country?

 Well you have a lot ofscope for invention, but there are still a few more things that seem consistentacross National Styles and are probably worth keeping in mind when you’retrying to come up with one.

 1)     Keepit simple. The more complicated it is the less likely it is to be a common practice.

2)     Pick3-5 techniques as themost common tortures. That seems to be the general number of commontechniques across a country. There are sometimes regional variances.

3)     Thinkabout what would be common in the country/culture.Torturers tend to use things that come easily to hand. ‘Pepper’, ie use of rawchilli, isn’t common in places where chilli peppers are not a commoningredient.

4)     Rememberdeprivation still counts. Bad cell conditions, starvation,sleep deprivation and dehydration are all very very common. Don’t forget aboutthem.

 That’s the best I cando. It’s not a complete answer but hopeful it helps. :)

I don’t use ‘You BreakIt You Bought It’ often. But I don’t think I can help you in terms of what might cause your super poweredcharacter to manifest powers.

 Real torture victimsdon’t tend to manifest super powers and I think what causes powers to manifest,that’s a detail of your world that I think you need to figure out for yourself.

 If it is as simple aspain, fear, stress and trauma then almost all tortures are equal in thatregard. They cause the same symptoms, the same mental health problems, the sametrauma. So it doesn’t matter what particular technique is used.

 Electrical torture ispretty wide spread globally but it isn’t used everywhere. The other torturetechniques used are likely to depend on where the torturer characters are from.Different countries have different ‘National Styles’ of torture.

 The UK stands out as acountry that tends to avoid electrical torture (the British have instead reliedon stress positions). The USA and France both use electrical torture along withwaterboarding. Israel uses children’s furniture. Most Middle Eastern countriesuse falaka. China currently seems to be using restraint tortures (which mayrepresent a change in practice since Rejali published ‘Torture and Democracy’).

 Beatings, sleepdeprivation, solitary confinement, starvation and uncomfortably hot/cold cellsare all common world wide.

 Without more context oneither the country and time period the story is set in or why the charactersthink torture will produce super powers I can’t really suggest anythingfurther.

 Electric shocks however I can help youwith.

 A quick note onterminology: electrocution usually refers to a lethal process. It means someoneis killed by an electric shock. I’m assuming that you want to discuss repeatedelectric shocks.

 How this affects acharacter really varies pretty widely depending on how it’s done.

 Electrical torture haschanged drastically over the ~100 years it’s been around. Rejali devotes abouta third of his book to cataloguing this change.

 Part of why I mentionthis is because the best survivor account I have on electrical torture comesfrom the Franco-Algerian war and is about a form of electrical torture that is not common anymore.

 Electrical torture now mostly involved Tasers and stunguns. In the not-so-distant-past the dominant form used a device called amagneto: a small, hand-cranked portable device which was often used to powermilitary field equipment, especially telephones.

 Both the modern andmagneto methods rarely leave scars or external marks. They’re both extremelypainful. They can both kill.

 Searching for misuse ofTasers turns up a lot of advocacy groups, a lot of videos of people around the world being tortured by police, and notvery many victim accounts.

 In fact my searchingthis morning has turned up more quotes from the families of victims than thevictims themselves. Which is quite a worrying sign and I think backs upRejali’s point that Tasers undermine basic oversight and accountability.

 For your purposes Ithink going back to Henri Alleg’s account from the Franco-Algerian war isprobably alright, so long as it’s the sensation and pain rather than theequipment that’s the focus.

 You might want to readAlleg’s book which covers the month or so he was tortured by French troops: The Question is one of the definitivemodern victim accounts and well worth a read.

 This is how Allegdescribes electrical torture:

 ‘He attached one of them [clips] to the lobe of my right ear and theother to a finger on the same side.Suddenly I leapt in my bonds and shouted with all my might. Cha- had just senta first electrical charge through my body. A flash of lightning exploded nextto my ear and I felt my heart racing in my breast. I struggled, screaming, andstiffened until the straps cut into my flesh. All the while the shockscontrolled by Cha-, magneto in hand, followed each other without cease.’

 They shout questions athim. Alleg responds-

 ‘Between two spasms, I turned my head towards him and said, “Youare wrong to do this. You will regret it!”’

 Alleg screams a gooddeal and the torturers gag him with his shirt.

 ‘Suddenly I felt as if a savage beast had torn the flesh frommy body. Still smiling above me, Ja- had attached the pincer to my penis. Theshocks going through me were so strong that the straps holding me to the boardcame loose. They stopped to tie them again and we continued.’

 ‘After a while the lieutenant took the place of Ja-. He hadremoved the wire from one of the pincers and fastened it down along the entirewidth of my chest. The whole of my body was shaking with nervous shocks,getting even stronger in intensity, and the session went on interminably. Theyhad thrown cold water over me in order to increase the intensity of the currentand between every two spasms I trembled with cold.’

 That’s all one session,Alleg’s first ‘session’ of torture which ends shortly after. It would be remissof me not to say that during this Alleg instructed his torturers to stopaddressing him with the informal ‘tu’ and reminded them that this was illegalrepeatedly. He also describes screaming a very great deal.

 He’s then beaten andsubjected to verbal abuse throughout. This is pretty typical.

 The torturers bring inone of his friends who has been tortured and then beat Alleg some more beforepassing him back for electrical torture.

 He describes the secondsession thus:

 ‘Instead of the sharp and rapid spasms that seemed to tear my body intwo, it was now a greater pain that took possession of all my muscles andtightened them in longer spasms. I was taut in my bonds. I tightened my teethon the gag with all my might and kept my eyes closed.’

 The torturers then giveup on magnetos and subject him to near-drowning. He’s beaten, burnt, suspendedand then thrown into a cell. This was all on the first day following his arrestand shows the typical pattern of torturers: using as many techniques as theycan and inflicting as much pain and damage as possible, as fast as possible.

 So far as I canremember these are the chief descriptions of the sensation of electric shocks inAlleg’s book.

 I hope that helps. :)

Interrogation is probably the scenario that comes to most Western people’s minds when torture is mentioned. The belief that torture can be used during interrogation is heavily ingrained in Western pop culture whether the story believes it ‘works’ or not.

 I’m going to go over some of the most common misconceptions about what bringing torture to the interrogation table does and does not do.

 Tell the Truth

 ‘Care must be exercised when making use of rebukes, invectives or torture as it will result in his telling falsehoods and making a fool of you.’ Japanese Kempeitai manual found in Burman 1943

 ‘The use of force often has the consequence that the person being interrogated under duress confesses falsely because he is afraid and as a consequence agrees to everything the interrogator wishes.’ Indonesian interrogation manual, East Timor, 1983

 ‘Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions concocted as a means of escaping from distress.’ CIA Kubark Counterintelligence Manual 1963

 I can’t prove conclusively that in the history of the world torture has never ever once produced accurate information. Overwhelmingly often it does not. There are several reasons why.

 Torture produces a lot of lies. Both people with information and people without information have a good reason to lie under torture. And they both do. The person with information does not want to give it up. The person without information needs to say something to make the torture stop.

 Humans are bad at telling when someone is lying. When tested even people who think they’re good at spotting lies can’t do it consistently. It can be almost impossible to tell who is hiding something and who genuinely doesn’t know what’s going on. A person under torture might have already told the truth and started lying when the interrogator didn’t believe them. Which is exactly what happened to Shelia Cassidy when she was tortured in Chile in the 70s.

 Pain and stress destroy the human memory. Experiments with willing volunteers have repeatedly shown that stress, pain and lack of sleep make it difficult for people to remember. A 2004 paper using US military survival school as the ‘high stress situation’ which simulated capture and interment as a POW (C A Morgan et al, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 27, 265-279) found that between 51-68% of soldiers identified the wrong person as their interrogator. Interrogations had lasted four hours with the interrogator shouting at and manhandling the volunteers. The low stress group identified the wrong person 12-38% of the time.

Torture results in loss of public trust. Most police and intelligence investigations live or die on public support. People coming forward voluntarily with accurate information. People reporting on suspects. In the long term torture actively recruits for the opposing ‘side’. According to the IRA this is exactly what happened in Northern Ireland when the British used torture. It also happened in Aden and to a lesser extent Cyprus.

 Torture in short produces more lies than truth and in such a mixture that it can be hard to tell which is which. Because of the pain it causes torture can make it impossible for victims who want to tell the truth to actually do so accurately. And because of the effect it has on communities it often makes it harder to gather accurate information through more reliable sources.

 Accuracy in torture is so poor it is ‘in some cases less accurate than flipping a coin’. (No that isn’t exaggeration, that’s a quote from D Rejali who literally wrote the book)

 The Ticking Bomb

 The famous ‘ticking-bomb’ scenario is a fictional situation (it literally came from a novel, written by a suspected torturer) where a disaster (such as a bomb attack) is known to be approaching and in order to save innocent lives the characters need more intel fast.

 So they start debating whether to use torture.

 Depending on the story and the characters they sometimes do torture. Usually if they do it gives them information they then use to save lives.

 There’s another problem, aside from the total lack of accuracy for information that comes from torture. Torture takes as long or longer than other interrogation techniques.

 According to the CIA’s own records detainees were put through several days of sleep deprivation before interrogation. The Senate Torture Report (testimony from Ali Soufan) estimated that their torture techniques took 30 days.

 According to British records and accounts from the IRA during the Troubles a single torture session by ‘walling’ (sleep deprivation, white noise and stress positions combined) could last between nine and forty three hours.

 I’ve selected the following quotes to give an idea of the time frame for short tortures used in interrogation. Both are from Northern Ireland by Irish men detained by the British. Emphasis is mine.

 ‘One powerfully built RUC detective would keep me pinned in a position while the other one would hold my elbow then press back on my wrist. And that could last for an hour or possibly two hours. And it’s excruciatingly painful, to the extent that I remember after three or four days I would simply go unconscious-’ Tommy McKearney

 ‘When I was taken away from Girdwood to be interned, I thought I had been there for about eight days, but it was only three. I later realised I was only being allowed to sleep for ten minutes at a time.’ Joe Docherty

 Interrogation always takes time. And that time is measured in days not minutes.

 Sanitised Portrayals

  ‘NO useful information so far….He did vomit a couple of times during the water board with some beans and rice. It’s been 10 hours since he ate so this is surprising and disturbing.’ Senate Torture Report, from quoted emails SSCI 2014, 41-42

 For me this is one of the most noticeable differences between torture in pop culture and torture in reality. Torture in films and books is always sanitised.

 I don’t mean that it isn’t gory or isn’t gory ‘enough’. Blood seems to be a cinematic staple and seeing the hero beaten and bloodied in a dingy lit room has become standard in a certain sort of action story.

 What I’m talking about are the body fluids and products we’re trained to think are less acceptable. Vomit. Urine. Mucus. Faeces.

 I can think of several movies where a ‘good-guy’ gets beaten to a bloody pulp on screen. I can’t think of any where they piss themselves. But losing control of bladder and bowel function seem to be pretty common in real life. A lot of the eyewitness accounts I’ve read about systematic torture mention the smell of urine and shit.

 Vomiting is something I don’t see mentioned as often in survivor accounts but I think it’s very likely to occur frequently because a lot of common methods of torture produce nausea.

The ‘Tough’ Interrogator

 ‘It may be only later, outside of that specific environment, that the torturer may question his or her behaviour, and begin to experience psychological damage resulting from involvement in torture and trauma. In these cases, the resulting psychological symptoms are very similar to those of victims, including anxiety, intrusive traumatic memories and impaired cognitive and social functioning.’ Psychologists Mark Costanzo and Ellen Gerrity.

 ‘Those techniques [CIA ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques] are so harsh it’s emotionally distressing to the people who are administering them.’ Dr James Mitchell, psychologist involved in the CIA’s EIT program.

 ‘We are where we are- and we’re left popping our Prozac and taking our pills at night.’ Anonymous torturer quoted in Cruel Britannia

 There’s a growing body of evidence that torture has a negative psychological effect on the torturer.

 The evidence is for the most part anecdotal, based on patterns emerging across interviews. Torturers, funnily enough, don’t show up in droves for psychological studies. But there is a pattern. One of substance abuse, addiction, PTSD and suicide.

 The cause of these symptoms in torturers is the same thing that causes trauma in people who witness horrific things. It is well known that seeing violent attacks on others can cause trauma in witnesses.

 Humans are empathic creatures.

 There is a measurable, automatic response in the brain to seeing others in pain. We can not control it and we can not stop it. Even when we are told that the other person is anaesthetized our brains still respond to their perceived pain.

 This, combined with the destruction of normal social interaction and dehumanisation, appears in a very real sense to harm torturers.

 If you’re planning to use torture as part of an interrogation scene it’s worth noting that some torturers do believe torture is a useful way to get information, despite the evidence. Some of them cling to the idea that they had to torture, that what they did was useful and saved lives. Some of them seem to overplay the value of torture in order to justify their own actions and jobs.

 None of that makes them immune to the effect of torturing another human being.

 Disclaimer

[Additional Sources-

‘Torture and Democracy’, Princeton, D Rejali (Only order this if you’ll be at home to pick it up, at over 850 pages it’s a monster)

‘Accuracy of eyewitness memory for person encountered during exposure to highly intense stress’, The International Journal of Law and Psychiatry C A Morgan, G Hazlett, A Doran, S Garrett, G Hoyt, P Thomas, M Baranoksi, S M Southwick, 2004 (This team have actually done a series on high stress situations and the effects on memory. Charles Morgan is the first author on this set of papers.)

‘Audacity to Believe’ Cleveland, S Cassidy

‘Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation.’ Harvard University Press, S O’Mara (Highly recommended, reasonably accessible for a layman)

‘Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture.’ Portobello Books, I Cobain (Very good history, although the author doesn’t seem to understand many of the techniques he writes about)

There wasa case of a woman, Odette Hallowes, who spied against the Nazis in France whowas kept in a dark room for several months. It didn’t demoralise her the waythe Nazi’s hoped. She’d been temporarily blind as a child for several monthsand the experience meant that this torture didn’t affect her as much as itmight have otherwise. Her story is actually super interesting andonce I find some books specifically on her I’m thinking of making a Masterpostabout her experience.

Generallyspeaking yes I believe that people who are deprived of sight for a long periodare sensitive to light afterwards. But my understanding is that usually fadeswith time, vanishing within a year.

It’s alsoworth stressing that sensory deprivationusually refers to something that affects more than one sense.

There aretwo basic experimental set ups that were used Baldwin’s box (confusingly notdesigned by Baldwin) and Lilly’s tank. Lilly’s tank has never to my knowledgebeen used to torture and his experiments were conducted on himself or otherconsenting volunteers.

Baldwin’sbox is a small, padded, sound proof room with no or low light. Sometimes theoccupant wore padded clothing and mittens to further reduce the sense of touch.The box basically works not so much by depriving sensation as blocking it. Theperson inside is cut off from sight, sound, most tactile sensation and smell.

Most ofthe experiments on sensory deprivation, both ethical and unethical, used avariant of Baldwin’s box.

Lilly’stank is actually closer to ‘true’ deprivation of the senses. It’s a small capsulefilled with salt water that’s kept at body-temperature. The occupant floats inthe water wearing a mask that cuts off sight and sound. This means they can’tsee, hear or smell anything as in Baldwin’s box but they’re additionally cutoff from sense of temperature and gravity.

Peoplegiven the opportunity to stay in Lilly’s tank as long as they can usually lastabout four hours although one outlier made it to ten.

Lilly wasvery clear that he didn’t want his research used to harm. It’s been touted as ahelpful meditative device and is now most often used in expensive retreats.Apparently for very short periods it can be incredibly relaxing. Two hours isalso sufficient for the occupant to start hallucinating.

Baldwin….wasnot a particularly nice guy. He used people who didn’t consent to hisexperiments essentially to see what would happen. As with most torture theresult is particularly poor science and a lot of injured people.

But itwas Ewen Cameron who was responsible for most of the horror stories weassociate with sensory deprivation.

He triedto use the box to ‘re-program’ psychiatric patients. He thought that he could ‘breakdown’ their personalities in this way and ‘build up’ a new personality of hischoosing.

To quoteRejali’s summary ‘Cameron was able todestroy minds, but not rebuild them.’ The people subjected the Cameron’s ‘experiments’(again this was incredibly poor science with no control group and littleconsistency) lost large chunks of their recent memory, between six months andten years of the time before the experiments.

Voluntaryexperiments by Donald Hebb using Baldwin’s box found that half of people can’tstand the box for over 24 hours. The highest outlier was six days. Volunteerswere so disorientated that when they left the box to go to the bathroom duringthe experiment they’d become lost inside the bathroom and need help gettingout.

Cameronkept one woman in the box for 35 days. Two of his victims were harmed to thepoint that they could no longer recognise faces of everyday objects. A followup study by a separate group of people found 60% of Cameron’s subjects had persistentamnesia (for the long periods I described) and 23% had ‘serious physicalcomplications’.

It’sintensely damaging.

But it’sactually rarely used in torture.

Baldwin’sbox was possibly used in some places (outside Baldwin and Cameron’sso-called-experiments) but it fell out of favour very very quickly.

Itprobably failed for the same reasons most torturers don’t use high tech equipment.It’s expensive, unfamiliar and can be difficult to use.

Rejalisuggests that international monitoring, the concerted effort to eliminate tortureglobally, also played a part. You can’t really disguise of justify the presenceof Baldwin’s box or Lilly’s tank in a police station, but car batteries, hosepipes and handcuffs have legitimate uses.

I hopethat helps.

(Edited the first paragraph after a comment on correctly referring to blind vs sighted people. Thanks for catching that)

There’s actually only one of me. :)

As to how- Well I suppose I’ve been reading about it for a very very long time. 

I like history and I try to keep up with the news (all of it not just the one country) and I have a decent memory. I followed the Nigerian election and the last Indian one and the fiasco in Kenya. I’ve got over a hundred books in my line of sight right now (and that’s not even the main bookcases) over half of them are history. 

That knowledge....adds up. Don’t get me wrong I do have a couple of books specifically on torture and some on specific scientific studies that are relevant to the area but most of this came from the news and history books. 

If the question is also why I’ve spent so long reading about all this stuff, why I need to know what’s going on in Kashmir or Sri Lanka or Syria-

I feel like the short answer is ‘I grew up in Saudi Arabia’.

 We were robbed once and I remember my mother saying (ratherinstinctively) to my father that we should call the police. ‘They’d just arrestthe driver.’ He said and I knew that was true. And after a couple of hours maybe days in jail he’d have ‘confessed’.

 I’ve been living in the UK for 18 years. I still haven’tquite gotten over the idea that the police exist to make people disappear.

 I’ve never been tortured. I’ve never seen anyone torturedand as far as I know no one I know has been tortured. But I knew growing upthat it was something that couldhappen. To me and the people around me. And there was really nothing anyonecould do about it.

 I won’t say it’s been a conscious effort to understandtorture but over the years I have learnt a lot. It is, in a very real way, partof my family history. My great-grandparents were on opposite sides during thedays of the British Empire. I’ve wondered occasionally whether they shot at ortortured each other.

 I’ve read an awful lot on the subject; from newspaperarticles to books to academic studies. Torture shows up in everything. It’s aregular feature in children’s movies. According to Amnesty International around 44% of people think they would be torturedif they were arrested.

 I guess I just think as writers, as creators, we should bedoing better by that 44%.

It’s notan area I’ve done a lot of reading on yet, but it’s quoted and brought up as anexample in a few of the more general books I’ve read.

 Rejalidevote a few pages to them, but considering his book is almost 800 pages long Iwouldn’t recommend buying his book for more information. What I say aboutSoviet psychiatric hospitals I got from Rejali’s basic outline.

 Theyessentially marked a turn away from show trials in the Soviet Union. Part ofthe purpose of show trials was to discredit the opposition both at home andinternationally. Which worked for a long time, decades, during which theinternational community generallyseems to have taken forced confessions at face value.

 But itcouldn’t last forever.

 Declaringkey members of the opposition insanebecame the alternate way to discredit them. Doctors were forced into animpossible position: they could defend diagnosis’s they knew were wrong or rejectthem and be labelled enemies of the state. The former put them in league withtorturers and the latter risked making them victims.

 Falsediagnosis varied but a common one was ‘sluggish schizophrenia’. I’m unsure ofthe precise definition but I think it was designed to suggest someone couldappear perfectly normal and lucid most of the time then suddenly manifestschizophrenic symptoms.

 Many ofthe people committed were drugged, often as a punishment. Haloperidol wasapparently common as was aminazin. The first produces side effects similar toParkinsons. The second makes people sleepy, groggy and generally knocks themout. Sulfazin was used to induce fevers and ‘insulin shock’ was used as a treatment.Sodium amobarbital, LSD and peyote were also used. So were tranquilisers.

 They werebeaten regularly, something the patients referred to as ‘fisticine’. Somethingsimilar to waterboarding was also described: using a wet towel to asphyxiateprisoners.

 Restraintswere used, including four point restraints and straight jackets. Restraintswere sometimes used in conjunction with something called ‘wet wraps’. The victimwas wrapped tightly in wet cloths, as the cloth dries it tightens furthersqueezing the victim ‘like a vice’.

 Here aresome of the sources Rejali used, they might serve as a starting point for yourown research.

 ZhoresMedvedev A Question of Madness,translation E de Kadt 1971

VladimirGusarov It Was Better Under Stalin inSoviet Psychoprisons publishers NewYork: Norton, 1979

ValeriyTarsis Ward 7 1965

AlexanderPodrabinek Punitive Medicine

 Hope thathelps. :)