The Ethics of Interrogation

The Ethics of Interrogation
Author: Paul Lauritzen
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2013-05-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1589019733

Can harsh interrogation techniques and torture ever be morally justified for a nation at war or under the threat of imminent attack? In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist strikes, the United States and other liberal democracies were forced to grapple once again with the issue of balancing national security concerns against the protection of individual civil and political rights. This question was particularly poignant when US forces took prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq who arguably had information about additional attacks. In this volume, ethicist Paul Lauritzen takes on ethical debates about counterterrorism techniques that are increasingly central to US foreign policy and discusses the ramifications for the future of interrogation. Lauritzen examines how doctors, lawyers, psychologists, military officers, and other professionals addressed the issue of the appropriate limits in interrogating detainees. In the case of each of these professions, a vigorous debate ensued about whether the interrogation policy developed by the Bush administration violated codes of ethics governing professional practice. These codes are critical, according to Lauritzen, because they provide resources for democracies and professionals seeking to balance concerns about safety with civil liberties, while also shaping the character of those within these professional guilds. This volume argues that some of the techniques used at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere were morally impermissible; nevertheless, the healthy debates that raged among professionals provide hope that we may safeguard human rights and the rule of law more effectively in the future.

An Ethics of Interrogation

An Ethics of Interrogation
Author: Michael Skerker
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2010-04-12
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0226761630

The act of interrogation, and the debate over its use, pervades our culture, whether through fictionalized depictions in movies and television or discussions of real-life interrogations on the news. But despite daily mentions of the practice in the media, there is a lack of informed commentary on its moral implications. Moving beyond the narrow focus on torture that has characterized most work on the subject, An Ethics of Interrogation is the first book to fully address this complex issue.In this important new examination of a controversial subject, Michael Skerker confronts a host of philosophical and legal issues, from the right to privacy and the privilege against compelled self-incrimination to prisoner rights and the legal consequences of different modes of interrogation for both domestic criminal and foreign terror suspects. These topics raise serious questions about the morality of keeping secrets as well as the rights of suspected terrorists and insurgents. Thoughtful consideration of these subjects leads Skerker to specific policy recommendations for law enforcement, military, and intelligence professionals.

Interrogation and Torture

Interrogation and Torture
Author: Steven J. Barela
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2020
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190097523

"This book focuses on the science, law and morality behind interrogational methods. It develops, for the first time, a comprehensive discussion regarding the legality of torture and the efficacy of interrogation. In other words, scientific research has concluded that torture is not effective. This then raises a natural question: What interrogational methods are effective? How does one employ those methods in way that is consistent with law and morality?"--

Why Torture Doesn’t Work

Why Torture Doesn’t Work
Author: Shane O'Mara
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2015-11-30
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0674743903

Torture is banned because it is cruel and inhumane. But as Shane O’Mara writes in this account of the human brain under stress, another reason torture should never be condoned is because it does not work the way torturers assume it does. In countless films and TV shows such as Homeland and 24, torture is portrayed as a harsh necessity. If cruelty can extract secrets that will save lives, so be it. CIA officers and others conducted torture using precisely this justification. But does torture accomplish what its defenders say it does? For ethical reasons, there are no scientific studies of torture. But neuroscientists know a lot about how the brain reacts to fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, and immersion in freezing water, all tools of the torturer’s trade. These stressors create problems for memory, mood, and thinking, and sufferers predictably produce information that is deeply unreliable—and, for intelligence purposes, even counterproductive. As O’Mara guides us through the neuroscience of suffering, he reveals the brain to be much more complex than the brute calculations of torturers have allowed, and he points the way to a humane approach to interrogation, founded in the science of brain and behavior. Torture may be effective in forcing confessions, as in Stalin’s Russia. But if we want information that we can depend on to save lives, O’Mara writes, our model should be Napoleon: “It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.”

Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques

Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques
Author: Nathan J. Gordon
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2006-01-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0080477461

Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques, Second Edition, is completely revised and updated so as to cover all the information a student needs to know to obtain answers from a witness, a victim, or a suspect and how to interpret these answers with the utmost accuracy. Building on the previous edition's ground-breaking search for truth in criminal and non-criminal investigations, this book contains five new chapters which include coverage of false confessions, interviewing the mentally challenged, and the ethics of interrogation in a post 9/11 world. This new edition includes highly illustrated chapters with topics ranging from the psycho-physiological basis of the forensic assessment to preparation for the interview/interrogation; question formulation; projective analysis of unwitting verbal clues; interviewing children and the mentally challenged; and pre-employment interviewing. Also included are several model worksheets and documents, case studies, and complete instructions for using the authors' Integrated Interrogation Technique, a 10-point, highly successful approach to obtaining confessions that can stand up in court. The book concludes with an insightful look at the future of truth verification. This book will be of benefit to attorneys, coroners, detectives, educators, forensic psychophysiologists (lie detection), human resource professionals, intelligence professionals, and investigators as well as journalists/authors, jurists, medical professionals, psychological professionals, researchers, and students. - Expanded coverage of Statement Analysis, including actual statements from real cases.- New photos to aid in assessing nonverbal behavior.- Added section on assessment of written statements.

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: the Legality, the Efficacy, and the Ethics

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: the Legality, the Efficacy, and the Ethics
Author: Patricia Ann Mulhall
Publisher:
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2018
Genre: Terrorism -- Prevention -- Law and legislation -- United States
ISBN:

The War on Terrorism commenced shortly following the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. As the United States government sought justice on the perpetrators of these heinous attacks, many of the detainees were captured and held in covert camps worldwide. While being interrogated, detainees were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques such as water boarding, prolonged exposure to freezing temperatures or intense heat, forced nudity, and sexual humiliation as attempts were made to garner information related to the security of our country. Despite being considered illegal and unethical under the International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions, the United States turned a blind eye to such tactics giving justification on utilitarian grounds. Details of abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay surfaced in late 2002 and the American people were made aware of the tactics used on detainees. Eye witness accounts and actual footage from inside the prison camps were being generated on the evening news and flooded news feeds across the intranet [sic]. The American people and other countries worldwide were made aware of common United States military practices involving the treatment of detainees and they demanded an investigation into such methods. The investigations began and the findings revealed encroachment of the International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions, specifically Article 75 that "prohibits murder, torture of all kinds, whether physical or mental, corporal punishment, and outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading teatment, [...]and any form of assault." Reports denouncing the effectiveness of torture have been filed by top ranking officials of the United States military forces and other military intelligence personnel as well as by credible physicians who have conducted studies and filed conclusions documenting the psychological effects of torture and the reliability of the information gathered using such tactics. This paper examines enhanced interrogation techniques from three perspectives: the legality of using methods of torture on suspected terrorists, the efficacy of these tactics in obtaining valid information that could be used to thwart future terrorist attacks on the United States, and finally, the ethical and moral inplications of utilizing methods of torture.

Mainstreaming Torture

Mainstreaming Torture
Author: Rebecca Gordon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2014
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199336431

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 reopened what many Americans had assumed was a settled ethical question: Is torture ever morally permissible? Rebecca Gordon argues that institutionalized state torture remains as wrong today as it was before those terrible attacks, and shows how U.S. practices during the ''war on terror'' are rooted in a history that includes support for torture regimes abroad and for the use of torture in the jails and prisons of this country.

Understanding Police Interrogation

Understanding Police Interrogation
Author: William Douglas Woody
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2020-03-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 147985736X

Uses techniques from psychological science and legal theory to explore police interrogation in the United States Understanding Police Interrogation provides a single comprehensive source for understanding issues relating to police interrogation and confession. It sheds light on the range of factors that may influence the outcome of the interrogation of a suspect, which ones make it more likely that a person will confess, and which may also inadvertently lead to false confessions. There is a significant psychological component to police interrogations, as interrogators may try to build rapport with the suspect, or trick them into thinking there is evidence against them that does not exist. Also important is the extent to which the interrogator is convinced of the suspect’s guilt, a factor that has clear ramifications for today’s debates over treatment of black suspects and other people of color in the criminal justice system. The volume employs a totality of the circumstances approach, arguing that a number of integrated factors, such as the characteristics of the suspect, the characteristics of the interrogators, interrogation techniques and location, community perceptions of law enforcement, and expectations for jurors and judges, all contribute to the nature of interrogations and the outcomes and perceptions of the criminal justice system. The authors argue that by drawing on this approach we can better explain the likelihood of interrogation outcomes, including true and false confessions, and provide both scholars and practitioners with a greater understanding of best practices going forward.

Police Interrogation and American Justice

Police Interrogation and American Justice
Author: Richard A. Leo
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674033701

"Read him his rights." We all recognize this line from cop dramas. But what happens afterward? In this book, Richard Leo sheds light on a little-known corner of our criminal justice system--the police interrogation. Incriminating statements are necessary to solve crimes, but suspects almost never have reason to provide them. Therefore, as Leo shows, crime units have developed sophisticated interrogation methods that rely on persuasion, manipulation, and deception to move a subject from denial to admission, serving to shore up the case against him. Ostensibly aimed at uncovering truth, the structure of interrogation requires that officers act as an arm of the prosecution. Skillful and fair interrogation allows authorities to capture criminals and deter future crime. But Leo draws on extensive research to argue that confessions are inherently suspect and that coercive interrogation has led to false confession and wrongful conviction. He looks at police evidence in the court, the nature and disappearance of the brutal "third degree," the reforms of the mid-twentieth century, and how police can persuade suspects to waive their Miranda rights. An important study of the criminal justice system, Police Interrogation and American Justice raises unsettling questions. How should police be permitted to interrogate when society needs both crime control and due process? How can order be maintained yet justice served?

Enhanced Interrogation

Enhanced Interrogation
Author: James E. Mitchell, Ph.D.
Publisher: Forum Books
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2016-11-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1101906855

In the dark days immediately after 9/11, the CIA turned to Dr. James Mitchell to help craft an interrogation program designed to elicit intelligence from just-captured top al-Qa'ida leaders and terror suspects. A civilian contractor who had spent years training U.S. military members to resist interrogation should they be captured, Mitchell, aware of the urgent need to prevent impending catastrophic attacks, worked with the CIA to implement "enhanced interrogation techniques"--which included waterboarding. In Enhanced Interrogation, Mitchell now offers a first-person account of the EIT program, providing a contribution to our historical understanding of one of the most controversial elements of America's ongoing war on terror. Readers will follow him inside the secretive "black sites" and cells of terrorists and terror suspects where he personally applied enhanced interrogation techniques. Mitchell personally questioned thirteen of the most senior high-value detainees in U.S. custody, including Abu Zubaydah; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the amir or "commander" of the USS Cole bombing; and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terror attacks--obtaining information that he maintains remains essential to winning the war against al-Qa'ida and informing our strategy to defeat ISIS and all of radical Islam. From the interrogation program's earliest moments to its darkest hours, Mitchell also lifts the curtain on its immediate effects, the controversy surrounding its methods, and its downfall. He shares his view that EIT, when applied correctly, were useful in drawing detainees to cooperate, and that, when applied incorrectly, they were counter-productive. He also chronicles what it is like to undertake a several-years-long critical mission at the request of the government only to be hounded for nearly a decade afterward by congressional investigations and Justice Department prosecutors. Gripping in its detail and deeply illuminating, Enhanced Interrogation argues that it is necessary for America to take strong measures to defend itself from its enemies and that the country is less safe now without them than it was before 9/11.