Any official conduct which substantially endangers a person's life or heath is torture. Where the guards inflict needless or wanton pain, suffering or brutality, that too is torture.
All the debate over whether this practice or that practice is torture is amoral and self-deceptive. If you have a question in your mind if some treatment is torture, the very fact that you have the question assures you that it's torture.
Starvation, thirst, cold, nakedness, verbal taunting, corporal abuse; all the things going on at the "Special Management Unit" in the Camp Hill prison, all of that is torture.
Certainly, the Constitution's direct admonition against "cruel and unusual punishment" was intended to absolutely outlaw torture in America's prisons. Pennsylvania habitually ignores the Constitution. Prison officials and guards do things to prisoners that they wouldn't think of doing to zoo animals, to farm animals or to their pets. They do things to other persons that they wouldn't want done to themselves.
Recently the focus for torture has been on what we as a nation have been doing to detainees, mostly foreigners. We label them "terrorists." If I give you the right label, I can break you on the rack! We have become as evil a people as those against whom we've warred.
But, in Pennsylvania, at least, torture goes far, far beyond the treatment of detainees. It's routine practice, indeed, it's official policy to torture Pennsylvania prisoners. The abuse is justified or even ignored by persons in power and by the public.
Would you tolerate a cop beating your dog? Then why do you tolerate a guard beating your son? Would you tolerate a keeper starving a chimp? Then why do you tolerate a keeper starving a woman at Muncy?
Where conduct by the guards or staff of a prison is designed to inflict substantial mental anguish or psychological suffering upon a prisoner so that he or she may die, commit suicide or go insane, that, too, is torture. The person's mental health is no less sacrosanct then her/his physical health.
We have reported many, many instances where Pennsylvania prisoners in everyone of the state's many prison have been subjected to conduct and conditions which amount to torture, treatment which is cruel, wanton and without any moral justification. The legislature needs to enact laws which simply say that any and all conduct which endangers a prisoner's health or life is forbidden. No sane person would trust prison officials to act humanely. If they were humane, they wouldn't be in the imprisonment business.
The theory behind prison is as punishment, not for punishment. Being sent to prison IS the punishment. The theory of prison isn't to chuck a miscreant behind bars and there put the Contis, Reeds and other sadists to work harming him. In theory, at least, prison is intended to make the prisoner better, to educate him/her away from his naughty ways, ways to which the majority objects. It's all about conformity, not about suffering.
It's true that there's a class of persons who enjoy seeing others suffer and/or who enjoy making other persons suffer. It's a kind of serious mental illness shared by MANY prison personnel. Slightly less nuts are the greater number of persons who think that suffering is okay so long as it isn't them themselves who are feeling the pain.
The greatest part of the public doesn't even know what goes on in the prisons they support. They don't really think about it and don't really care. Worst of all, they trust the officials in charge and the legislature to do what's right.
Take a lesson from George Bush; did he do what was right? What was good? What helped us? There's a lot of George Bush in prison officials; dumb, vicious and indifferent to the harm they cause.
In America, conformity is VERY important. The public is intolerant of "different" conduct. It's part of the Christian mythology and Christian moral teaching. Americans are afraid of those who are different and of those who do different things. It makes Americans feel insecure.
An important aim of prison is to separate "different" people from the conformists, to curtail freedom so that "different" people can't do "different" things. We want to force everyone to behave as we behave, or as we pretend to behave.
Prison doesn't exist in order to torture persons we dislike. It doesn't exist in order to give sport to insane guards or prison administrators. The theory behind prison (and I don't justify it) is to compel persons to conform by "correcting" them and curtailing their liberty.
Oddly, the Pennsylvania Department of Imprisonment has a code about money. It has no code about torture. Money is God! Torture is simply an unpleasantness to be ignored while worshiping the almighty ten-spot.
Prison authorities don't eliminate torture. They accept and control it. Prison administrators utilize torture or allow subordinates to utilize it as a terror tactic. The idea is to frighten prisoners out of acting in their own best interests. Prison terror isn't directed toward "correction." It's used as a "deterrent" so that prisoners are easier to manage.
Prison officials are, after all, lazy state employees. They want the easiest job possible. To many of them, dead prisoners would be ideal. To all of them, docile prisoners are desirable. They don't like prisoners who use the courts, use the law, establish organizations or have families or outside contacts. They really hate prisoners who struggle against their imprisonment. The character traits which make good citizens are the very traits that prison officials try to crush.
The legislature must face up to the torture flourishing in the Pennsylvania prisons. It needs to enact a simple, direct law which provides that ANY form of conduct by a prison official which substantially endangers a person's life or health is torture and punishable as a crime.
A small example of what kind of torture is actually going on in Pennsylvania is contained in the article "Contact Gary Tucker About Torture in the SMU"
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