Your Ideal Cruel and Unusual Punishment

So here's the idea: how would you allow torture, cruel or unusual punishment or Enhanced Interrogation Techniques to be practised by your country's government?

Note that the question isn't: would you, or do you think it is right to carry out such things, or does it work? Those are offtopic for this thread (feel free to make another about them). Here I'm assuming your answer is YES and I want to know the details. Public or secret? Would you have an official post for it and tight rules for controlling its use? What would you allow? (please, no squicky details!) Would it be for interrogation, punishment or public retribution, and what kinds of crimes would warrant it? Would you have set punishments, let the prisoner's darkest fears dictate the punishment or let the victims have their say? Maybe you like the idea of 'unusual' more than 'cruel' - how would that go?

Yes this is a rather dark thread! Please be polite if you can. The poor mods have been very busy lately!

I wouldn- oh, can't do that in this topic.

Curse you and your rules

Room 101. Play their own fears against them.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

I would insist that the leaders of my government be subjected to it first.

You'd have to take Too Kinky to Torture into account. I mean, clearly the prisoners at Abu Ghraib weren't enjoying the experience, but some people will pay good money to be sexually humiliated, led around on dog leads and photographed naked.

From my personal experience, messing up people's sleep patterns is a good way of making them completely stressed out and probably a highly effective way of making them crack under interrogation, so I'd go for sleep deprivation. I believe it's commonly used for these purposes now. No-one could possibly enjoy that.

"Well, it's a lifestyle"

Force them to take records of all government debates.

Make them watch every movie Paris Hilton's been in for two weeks straight.

Cut off almost all sensation. Gray walls. Bland soup. No smell. Restraints 24/7. No sound. No real feeling. And wait.

edited 23rd Jul '11 2:23:21 PM by mailedbypostman

Sounds peaceful.

If technology ever reaches a point where we can recreate any experience, the argument could be made that certain criminals should be made to relive their crimes from the perspective of their victims.

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

My original idea was to have them relive the most horrible moments of their lives.

Isolation. Protracted isolation. They need not even be tied up. Put them in a room (the bigger the better; it can be a whole building) that is bland and uninteresting, and throw away the key. Don't even monitor them; that's human contact. Literally, absolutely, completely alone.

I am now known as Flyboy.

I don't think I could ever do anything cruel and unusual.

The emotions of others can seem like such well guarded mysteries, people 8egin to 8elieve that's how their own emotions should 8e treated.

I thought this thread was asking like a mixture between "Your favourite fetish" and "Your ideal death," like it was asking what punishment I would love to happen to myself.

Now I'm disappointed. I had an answer ready.

tout est sacré pour un sacreur (Avatar by Rappu!)

Undecided, but I lean towards secret.

It would be for interrogation and rehabilitation*

. It would replace the death penalty, life imprisonment, and most other long prison sentences.

I don't think enhanced interrogation would be used very often domestically.

The approach would be purely evidence-based. Techniques that prove ineffective at producing information or personality change would be disallowed. In the event that two techniques prove equally effective, the crueler of the two would be disallowed.

For the sake of efficiency, a set of standard techniques would be sought, but individual customization would be employed should a one-size-fits-all approach prove inadequate.

Various brainwashing techniques, psychoactive chemicals, and neurosurgery.

Hell, don't hold back on our account.

For interrogation - any techniques like sleep deprivation, limited drug usage*

, and isolation, and cool by me. They use sleep deprivation in boot camp, for crying out loud, and yet the people who make it through are not harmed by the experience.

For punishment - honestly, any kind of technique designated as "torture" is likely to only be used as revenge. The one exception is for the death penalty; if it's legal, then it should be no more expensive than putting a knife through their heart or locking them in an air-tight box and waiting a day or so to crack it open to check. While I emotionally like the idea of revenge-style "justice" it is incompatible with the rule of law.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

If I was dealing with a terrorist and was told to suggest an effective torture method?

Normally I'd say "Fuck off", but... lock'em in a room, with their eyes held open, looking at pictures of the victims of terrorist plots. Slowly turning the pages. Forcing them to look at the horrific images. (Maybe even throw in sound clips if available.)

Confront 'em with what their actions did or will do if the plot isn't stopped. (This is assuming its a terrorist we're torturing... who else would you torture?)

Leave them with that for 72 hours, see if they're still not open to switching sides. Or at least in serious need of eyedrops.

edited 23rd Jul '11 5:52:06 PM by GameChainsaw

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

I'm honestly not comfortable with any sort of torture being used. Maybe psychological stuff like solitary confinement, uncertainty about their fate.

Really, though, I have a great deal of difficulty contemplating allowing anything that I wouldn't be OK with doing to your average citizen or minor criminal like a graffiti-er. Once you start drawing a line between 'real people' and 'dirty terrorists/traitors/murderers' things are going to go badly.

edited 23rd Jul '11 6:20:17 PM by LoniJay

Be not afraid...

Something along the lines of a great hunt.

A bunch of angry people with Rifles get to chase the punished through a open desert. They have vehicles equipment and time to set up where they please. They can escape the zone they are free but permanently outcast from society. If they are caught back in society they are summarily excuted on the spot via gunshot to the head. Fits well in fiction.

edited 23rd Jul '11 9:19:09 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Sleep deprivation until death, keeping them awake by means of noise, then stress positions, and then when those stop working, drugs.

It's one of the most insanely slow ways to die.(In terms of feeling like it takes forever) And it could result in some awesome research into sleep deprivation using human test subjects. FOR SCIENCE!

Short of that? I'd hand them over to scientists to be lab rats. Live subjects to experiment on, so much valuable research has came from horrible people like Mengele and the Japanese Scientists who did fucked up shit to POW's. They would be declared dead, because they would eventually die from the effects of the experimentation.

edited 23rd Jul '11 9:41:51 PM by Barkey

I wouldn't have thought of sleep deprivation. You're a genius, dude. I'm totally going to work that in somewhere... somehow... I don't know, dammit, but I'm using it!

I am now known as Flyboy.

If I were to get over my "NO WE CANNOT HURT THINGS D: D: D:" thing...everything Tongpu posted. Exactly that.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

Mengele was too busy with his own disturbing fetishes to produce any actual scientific research though.

If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers lied -Rudyard Kipling

He conducted great research on fetishes.

I probably wouldn't, since torture is suboptimal and unnecessary and gives you bad PR. Still, if I totally had to...

Brutality would be public: If you can't afford the political backlash, the guy doesn't need any torturin'. The publicness is a guarantee that they can't torture random people: It'd be an outrage if they did.

Torture would be performed by intelligence officials, probably throuh shock and beatings. These guys would be trained to minimize death or serious injury.

It wouldn't be part of standard interrogation for suspects and arrestees: It'd only be part of interrogation of terrorists and those tried for conspiracy to violate civil rights or abuse of authority (any authority figure so accused would be tortured to find out). It'd also be performed (publicly and to death) for serial murderers'n'rapists, and those convicted of abuse of authority, or false imprisonment. Those tortured to death would be whipped to exsanguination with barbed wire.

edited 24th Jul '11 5:29:06 AM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.