It certainly can be. If I whip you, that is a punishment and a torture. If I send you to your room, that is a punishment, but not a torture as then you don’t have to be around me. You sassy kid. Since it caused damage and was punishment, it was torture. I think you need both. My explanation above wasn’t terribly artful.
when you have 9 foot snow banks preventing you from leaving the house, it is a bit hard to get out of your house. The snow that butted the doors and windows had iced up and frozen very solid, when the roads were finally plowed out it took several people to dig me out.
I suppose I could have broken the jalousie windows to get access to the ice to chip my way out … but then i would have been stranded 5 miles from the nearest neighbor and no way to get there other than walk through huge banks of snow.
They would have found me in April, I guess.
The difference there seems to be that you were in “solitary” for a brief period of time, only two weeks. The New Yorker article that Blalron links to in post 19 discusses cases of people being in solitary confinement for much longer than that. In that article it is said that the effects of solitary confinement are severe and long-lasting.
The treatment of Bradley Manning, the prisoner mentioned in the article in the OP, seems uncalled for, assuming what I read in this Salon article is true. the author says that Bradley Manning has never had any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems since being arrested. But he has been held in solitary confinement for 23 out of 24 hours every day since he has been arrested seven months ago (May 2010), sitting alone in his cell, barred from exercising, under constant surveillance, denied a pillow and sheets for his bed.
From this site, A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning (from the law offices of David E. Coombs, army court-martial defense specialist; David Coombs is a lieutenant colonel):
Bradley Manning’s cell is six feet by twelve feet, with a bed, a drinking fountain, and a toilet. The guards have not harassed him but don’t speak to him. He is woken up every day at 5:00 AM (7:00 AM on weekends) and not allowed to sleep between 5:00 AM and 8:00 PM. If he tries to sleep, the guards make him sit or stand up. He can watch local TV stations (up to 3 hours on weekdays and 6 hours on weekends). From 7:00 PM to 9:20 PM he is allowed to write to family and take a 20 minute shower. Only people on his approved list (and his attorneys) are allowed to write back to him. He can request (by name) up to 15 books or magazines, which have to be reviewed and approved by a board at the prison; once approved, someone is allowed to order the reading material to be sent to him via a third party like Amazon (not sent directly.) He is only allowed one item of reading material at a time in his cell, and it’s taken away at bedtime.
“The guards are required to check on PFC Manning every five minutes by asking him if he is okay. PFC Manning is required to respond in some affirmative manner. At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is okay.”
“He is prevented from exercising in his cell. If he attempts to do push-ups, sit-ups, or any other form of exercise he will be forced to stop.”
To sleep, he has to strip down to his boxer shorts and turn in all his clothes, which are returned the same day.
Is it torture compared to what? If I am to be tortured and given a choice of methods, I’d pick solitary confinement.
The treatment of Bradley Manning is absurd. I still see no reason to prevent someone from committing suicide, especially considering the charges against him. But compared to what our enemies would have done to someone in the same circumstances, this can hardly be called torture.
The question is “does this fit the legal definition of torture, according to US law, or according to international standards”, not “can I think of worse things that might be done to someone”.
The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, signed and ratified by the USA, defines 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 him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.”
The New Yorker article cited above (post 19) certainly seems to indicate that solitary confinement can result in severe mental suffering.
If this is in fact what the US government is doing to an unindicted and unconvicted prisoner who is not yet accused of even a crime this is the act of a government unworth saving.
You are painting with a very broad brush. Does one wrong act make the entire US government not worth saving? Or is that an anarchic position?
So if the President and the Attorney General know about this, and the military judge advocate general people all know about this rather famous case. And their consciences allow this? What do they hope to gain by depriving him of sleep? Sheets? Are they hoping he talks? Commits suicide? Do they think that if he has a good night’s sleep that he will endanger the nation?
If this story is true, it means that they have been doing this for some time. That makes it in cold blood.
Such a government would be evil. I could not stomach a government that does evil for the sake of evil. Such would not be Obama and “change we can believe in” but rather “keep doing the same old evil.”
Actually this sounds like an anti-suicide policy. In New York, we have two levels of suicide watchs. One’s a general watch which requires a check every fifteen minutes. The other is a constant watch. This five minute check seems to fall in between.
The same policy would apply to not allowing PFC Manning to have sheets or keep his clothes at night. Prisoners have committed suicide by strangling themselves in bed under the blankets.
It doesn’t say so but I am assuming PFC Manning is not required to give a verbal response to his five minute checks during his sleeping time of 8:00 pm to 5:00 am. If Manning was actually being kept awake around the clock, he’d be dead within a couple of weeks.
Sleep deprivation is not part of a suicide watch. I hope that the story is false.
I can’t see how the linked article can be literally true. It says this watch has been going on since July. If PFC Manning were actually being woken up every five minutes around the clock he’d be dead by now. So as I posted above, I think what the writer meant was that this routine is carried out during the daytime and Manning is allowed to sleep at night.
What right do they have to wake him up in the daytime if he is napping? He isn’t convicted of anything. While doing so wouldn’t be evil and inhuman, it serves no purpose except punishment.
I don’t know what the set-up is at the Quantico Brig so I can’t comment directly on their procedures.
I worked in NY prisons. We allowed people in special confinement to sleep whenever they wanted. A lot of them ended up sleeping during the day and staying awake at night. It wasn’t an issue because we had pretty much the same coverage on all shifts in special hosuing areas.
But we would enforce sleeping schedules in general population for pragmatic reasons. We would have reduced security at night based on the assumption that most prisoners would be asleep. If we allowed prisoners to sleep whenever they wanted to, some would sleep at night and some would sleep at day and we’d end up having to provide full coverage around the clock. So we regulated their schedule so everyone slept at the same time and part of this was forbidding daytime sleeping.
It says specifically that, if they can’t see him at night, they will come in and wake him. This means that, while they do check, he does not have to respond if he can be seen. It also confirms that the reason they are depriving him of sleep is not because there’s not enough staff at night.
But that doesn’t surprise me: the military is a punishment oriented culture. I expect them to only allow the minimum possible, not be humanitarians.
Including the no letters from people not on an approved list? The only one book at a time restriction? The prohibition on exercising? Is this supposed to raise someone’s spirits so that they don’t commit suicide?
There are several things that I don’t know.
- Was Manning threatening suicide before this treatment started? The article says he has been in solitary confinement since his arrest. And is he at danger of committing suicide now?
- Was he ever a danger to others? Isn’t that one of the justifications for solitary confinement?
- If his jailers are currently doing this as a method of punishment, as BigT suggests, not out of concern for his safety or the safety of others, then, after reading the New Yorker article already mentioned, describing the effects of long-term solitary confinement, I am of the opinion it is sadistic and amounts to torture.
And what is especially egregious is that this is being done to someone who hasn’t even been charged with anything. I would expect better in the USA.
I’m confused by what you’re trying to say here. Do you think they are waking him up every five minutes throughout the night or not?
I’m not a member of the military but this doesn’t seem to be to be an accurate overall description of military culture. Punishment may exist in the military but I don’t think the military is oriented towards it. I think that punishment is a minor aspect of the overall military culture and most members of the military can serve for years without encountering it.
No idea on the exercise rule. That’s one I’m not familiar with.
But limits on correspondence and property are pretty standard to all prisoners. Some of them are actually more generous than what PFC Manning would receive if he was in special housing in a New York prison.
I don’t now any of the particulars about PFC Manning other than what I’ve read in Wikipedia and the linked articles here. (Which say Manning is on a Prevention of Injury watch.) But I’ll note that Lt Col Coombs wrote “The guards at the confinement facility are professional. At no time have they tried to bully, harass, or embarrass PFC Manning. Given the nature of their job, however, they do not engage in conversation with PFC Manning.” so I think it’s clear that this is not something being made up by his guards.
It’s also not clear if PFC Manning is being denied sleep. Lt Col Coombs says he isn’t allowed to sleep during the daytime but also says he is allowed a nine hour sleep period at nights (eleven hours on weekends). The Salon article quotes David House, who has visited Manning on a regular basis, and says that “Like most individuals held in severe isolation, Manning sleeps much of the day”.
Which, to be fair, they bloody well should be, seeing as he hasn’t been charged with anything. Any restrictions on the liberty of an uncharged individual should have to pass an incredibly high level of scrutiny.
A general rule is to try to make the rules as universal as possible. We try to avoid having rules that apply to some prisoners in a group but not others.
First, it’s an issue of fairness. If all the prisoners are living together why should some of them be able to do something or have something and others not? If we can’t allow everyone to do something we generally will not allow anyone to do it.
Second, it avoids favoritism. Related to the first. Make one set of policies and apply them imparitally to everyone. Don’t allow some prisoners to flout the rules. (Although this guideline often slips in practice. If a prisoner is your janitor and he does a good job keeping the unit clean, you let him hang out and watch TV for an hour after he’s done working. But you try to keep it reasonably objective - you let the guys who clean the unit watch TV not the guys you like better.)
Third, it avoids dissent among prisoners. If one some prisoners have a privilege others don’t, it creates resentment among the deprived prisoners. Resentment between prisoners leads to arguments and threats and fights - all things we want to avoid.
Fourth, it makes legal justification easier. We’re always be challenged by lawsuits to extend privileges. I used to write up justifications for our policies on a regular basis. And one of the hardest challenges to answer is something like “You let some prisoners have all the books they want in their cell and it’s not a problem. So why can’t you let every prisoner have all the books he wants in his cell?” There’s good reasons why we can’t let every prisoner have all the books he wants and have to set a limit. But it’s a lot easier to justify that if we can show we apply the same limit to everyone.
Fifth, most of these rules really do have a rational basis to them. That basis may often not be the individual prisoner’s preference but, as a I wrote above, our primary responsibility is to keep the entire population secure.