Torture occurs when a person imposes severe psychological or physical pain on someone else for a specific reason. Authorities torture a person to obtain a confession for a crime or to gain information from them. According to Amnesty international (2020), it is used as way of punishment in prisons around the world. Under international law, torture, among other forms of ill-treatment of inmates, is always illegal and has been outlawed for decades. However, many countries have failed to criminalize it as national law hence defying international law. The United States criminal justice system is one of the countries that ignore the guidelines in regard to the law.
High profile bodies such as the CIA have misled the public to understand torture to be generally confined to national security and terrorism cases. However, research reveals that it can happen to anyone found on the wrong side of the law (Amnesty international, 2020). Torture methods have several variations: they can be physical; the torturer gains total authority over the prisoner’s body and, in most cases, is done by more than one person for physical dominance. It involves practices like an electric shock of the body, extreme beatings, pulling off body parts like nails, and many more (Amnesty international, 2020). The main aim is to have the prisoner suffer physically, either with or without direct contact with the torturers. For instance, depriving sleep does not directly involve physical contact, yet an inmate ends us excessively exhausted hence suffering physically (Amnesty international, 2020). It is a form of torture which is not generally undertaken to punish the victim but to break the prisoner’s will. For instance, when a spy is being tortured to obtain information, the torturer must first break his/her will. Therefore, physical torture as punishment does not consist of pre-set, lawful guidelines over a definite period.
The second form of torture is long term isolation in prisons. For the safety of prisoners, the prison officials isolate those who exhibit violent behavior and those sentenced for the extremely severe cases (Amnesty international, 2020). In this light, different classes of isolation units range from very restrictive to less restrictive. Isolation in less restrictive cells allows the inmates to socialize once in a while with others. However, for those in very restrictive cells, total isolation is involved where inmates are confined for up to 25 years (Amnesty international, 2020). Due to this, many penology scholars have condemned this form of punishment and labeled it as a level of punishment similar to psychological torture. Amnesty international (2020) states that the probability that long-term isolation contributes to a reduction in criminality in jails has been featured as “speculative” by some scholars. Evidence has proven that they have done so little in reducing criminal activities in and outside prisons.
The death penalty involves a punishment where a prisoner is sentenced to death for a crime committed. It is mostly used in severe crimes such as murder, rape, drug-related infractions, among others (American Civil Liberties Union, 2020). In my opinion, death penalty is immoral and represents a lack of appreciation for human life. It forever deprives a prisoner of the chance to gain from new evidence or new laws that may warrant the reversal of a conviction or the revoking of a death sentence.
In conclusion, this paper has successfully discussed the issue of prison punishment by specifically looking at the two types of tortures which are often used in obtaining information from suspects. Even though the methods are often considered effective by many security agencies such as the CIA and others around the world, they are usually harsh to the people being tortured. The issue of death penalty has also been discussed. It is high time countries find other ways of dealing with people who commit serious crimes instead of the death penalty. Life imprisonment is probably a better option that countries could consider.
References
American Civil Liberties Union. (2020). The case against the death penalty. Web.
Amnesty International. (2020). Why Amnesty thinks torture should be abolished everywhere. Web.