The Effectiveness of Torture in Relation to Criminal Justice and its Ethical Implications

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Recommended: Torture—Is it Ever Ethical

Interrogational torture is one of the many tough ethical questions that people debate about in the United States. Is it right or is it wrong? Many believe that the United States does not practice intense interrogational acts such as torture. Many people have fought to abolish any form of torture while many fight to keep some forms of it to help keep the peace. Whether you believe in it or not, torture is and will always be an ethical dilemma that comes up.

According to Joycelyn M. Pollock, torture is defined as the deliberate infliction of violence and, through violence, severe mental and/or physical suffering upon individuals. Torture, according to Christopher Tindale as quoted in Torture and the Ticking bomb by Bob Brecher, describes torture as:

“any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from that person or a third person information or confession, punishing that person for an act committed or suspected to have been committed, or intimidation or dehumanizing that person or other persons” (Brecher).

Brecher explains that torture cannot be defined but only described because it is such a real thing, and real things cannot be defined because they are always changing.

Should torture be used to gain important information? First you have to ask if interrogational torture even works. As described by Brecher, torture is not a useful tool in obtaining information in regards to the ticking time bomb scenario. Brecher argues several things that discount the use of interrogational torture. First, from the perspective of the person being held captive, they know that if they do know the location of a bomb for example, that they will be...

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...own case involving extraordinary renditions is the case of a Canadian citizen named Maher Arar. Arar was apprehended by U.S. officials for supposedly having connections to al Qaeda. He was deported to Syria where he was imprisoned and tortured. In 2009, documents released by the Obama administration reveal that the Bush administration ordered the use of torture against to al Qaeda suspects an alleged 266 times (Breehner).

The debate is out about torture and interrogation. There will always be opposing views and arguments. The War on Terror has changed the way that we handle suspected terrorists, and the right way to handle hem will forever be debated. Weather torture works or doesn’t work, whether it is morally right or morally wrong can be viewed differently by everybody, and will for sure be at the forefront of ethical dilemmas in the criminal justice field.

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