Torture

[David Sklansky]

A serial child kidnapper takes the kids and buries them alive in coffins. They suffocate in 48 hours. He is captured a few hours after taking his last victim. He CONFESSES but will not tell where the child is buried. Is it morally wrong to torture him if that is the most effective way to find the kid? If you say, yes explain why. If you say no then explain why torture is illegal even in cases like this (as it surely is, in this country anyway).

[partygirluk]

This is a really tricky concept, to which there is no easy answer.

Whilst it is easy to say that torture here is clearly moral from a utilitarian point of view, it does not follow that torture should be made legal, and become just another method for the authorities to use. Alan Dershowitz, who I think is a Law Professor at Harvard, argued for the introduction of "torture permits". So in this case, the police could go to a judge and ask for the right to torture the kidnapper, and providing the law was written satisfactorally, the judge would approve.

[partygirluk]

Just want to add that an individual act can be moral, but that does not necessarily mean it should be legal, nor should immoral acts be illegal.

e.g. God visits me and tells me that my next door neighbour's brand new baby will turn out to be the world's biggest ever serial killer unless I act. For whatever reason, I am sure that this is actually God, but I am sworn not to reveal too many details. It is probably moral for me to kill the baby. But clearly the government should not allow people to kill if they claim God told them so.

[Eihli]

i'm having a hard time drawing a connection between your example and his.

[partygirluk]

[ QUOTE ]
i'm having a hard time drawing a connection between your example and his.

[/ QUOTE ]

OK, David said

"If you say no then explain why torture is illegal even in cases like this (as it surely is, in this country anyway). "

and I am pointing out that just because an individual instance of torture is moral, it does not necessarily follow that torture should be legal.

[Voltorb]

I don't think it would be morally wrong in this situation to use torture. You have a confession that was obtained without using any nefarious methods, so you know the guy is guilty. You know that he knows where the last child is buried. The child in this instance has more right to life and mercy than the serial child kidnapper. Since the kidnapper is showing the child no mercy, show him none. I guess this is sort of a sick perversion of the golden rule, but I think you are morally justified in this situation.

I liked the idea brought up by party girl about torture permits. For some reason society has decided that we should take a closer look at torture, specifically with regards to when torture is morally justified and should therefore be legal. Since every situation is different, I believe a judge is the natural choice for being an arbiter of such situations, although I also believe he should work within strict guidelines. For instance, if the kidnapper had not confessed yet, I don't see how the torture could be justified even if every detective in the nation was 100% sure of his guilt. Presumed innocence and the right to trial by jury guarantees the kidnapper his right to fair treatment, even if it means the child would surely die.

That being said, why not just pump the kidnapper full of MDMA and sodium barbitol. He'll be dying to tell you where the child is buried afterwards.

[IrishHand]

What about the fact that nearly every skilled interrogator will tell you that torture is among the least effective means of getting information out of someone?

See eg. Washington Post Article: The Torture Myth

I believe registration's required, so a portion of that article:

By contrast, it is easy to find experienced U.S. officers who argue precisely the opposite. Meet, for example, retired Air Force Col. John Rothrock, who, as a young captain, headed a combat interrogation team in Vietnam. More than once he was faced with a ticking time-bomb scenario: a captured Vietcong guerrilla who knew of plans to kill Americans. What was done in such cases was "not nice," he says. "But we did not physically abuse them." Rothrock used psychology, the shock of capture and of the unexpected. Once, he let a prisoner see a wounded comrade die. Yet -- as he remembers saying to the "desperate and honorable officers" who wanted him to move faster -- "if I take a Bunsen burner to the guy's genitals, he's going to tell you just about anything," which would be pointless. Rothrock, who is no squishy liberal, says that he doesn't know "any professional intelligence officers of my generation who would think this is a good idea."

Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop."

Worse, you'll have the other side effects of torture. It "endangers our soldiers on the battlefield by encouraging reciprocity." It does "damage to our country's image" and undermines our credibility in Iraq. That, in the long run, outweighs any theoretical benefit. Herrington's confidential Pentagon report, which he won't discuss but which was leaked to The Post a month ago, goes farther. In that document, he warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees in Iraq, that their activities could be "making gratuitous enemies" and that prisoner abuse "is counterproductive to the Coalition's efforts to win the cooperation of the Iraqi citizenry." Far from rescuing Americans, in other words, the use of "special methods" might help explain why the war is going so badly.

An up-to-date illustration of the colonel's point appeared in recently released FBI documents from the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These show, among other things, that some military intelligence officers wanted to use harsher interrogation methods than the FBI did. As a result, complained one inspector, "every time the FBI established a rapport with a detainee, the military would step in and the detainee would stop being cooperative." So much for the utility of torture.

Given the overwhelmingly negative evidence, the really interesting question is not whether torture works but why so many people in our society want to believe that it works. At the moment, there is a myth in circulation, a fable that goes something like this: Radical terrorists will take advantage of our fussy legality, so we may have to suspend it to beat them. Radical terrorists mock our namby-pamby prisons, so we must make them tougher. Radical terrorists are nasty, so to defeat them we have to be nastier.

[Voltorb]

[ QUOTE ]
At the moment, there is a myth in circulation, a fable that goes something like this: Radical terrorists will take advantage of our fussy legality, so we may have to suspend it to beat them. Radical terrorists mock our namby-pamby prisons, so we must make them tougher. Radical terrorists are nasty, so to defeat them we have to be nastier.


[/ QUOTE ]
All just expedient excuses for bringing the nation into a police state. Drug War, War on Terror... They're trying to build a prison.

[Broken Glass Can]

[ QUOTE ]


and I am pointing out that just because an individual instance of torture is moral, it does not necessarily follow that torture should be legal.

[/ QUOTE ]

So like Jury nullification, this is an instance where we should allow torture, even if illegal, and just pardon the torturers after the fact. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

ps - There are so many old threads on the issue of torture, that this issue has been well discussed already.

[partygirluk]

Yeah torture is unreliable. I certainly would not like to see the results of torture used as part of a prosecution case against the torturee. But in this case, when the kidnapper is yielding nothing, then torture might be worthwhile (but so might other techniques).