Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties.
A corporal punishment or a physical punishment is a punishment which is intended to cause physical pain to a person. When it is inflicted on minors, especially in home and school settings, its methods may include spanking or paddling. When it is inflicted on adults, it may be inflicted on prisoners and slaves, and can involve methods such as whipping with a belt or a horsewhip.
Flagellation, flogging or whipping is the act of beating the human body with special implements such as whips, rods, switches, the cat o' nine tails, the sjambok, the knout, etc. Typically, flogging has been imposed on an unwilling subject as a punishment; however, it can also be submitted to willingly and even done by oneself in sadomasochistic or religious contexts.
Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerous countries and regions. The first known account of execution by hanging is in Homer's Odyssey. Hanging is also a method of suicide.
The Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State, shortened to as SAVAK or S.A.V.A.K. was the secret police of the Imperial State of Iran. It was established in Tehran in 1957 and continued to operate until the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when it was dissolved by Iranian prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar.
Penal transportation was the relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to a distant place, often a colony, for a specified term; later, specifically established penal colonies became their destination. While the prisoners may have been released once the sentences were served, they generally did not have the resources to return home.
The pillory is a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, used during the medieval and renaissance periods for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse. The pillory is related to the stocks.
The strappado, also known as corda, is a form of torture in which the victim's hands are tied behind their back and the victim is suspended by a rope attached to the wrists, typically resulting in dislocated shoulders. Weights may be added to the body to intensify the effect and increase the pain. This kind of torture would generally not last more than an hour without rest, as it would otherwise likely result in death.
The term boot refers to a family of instruments of torture and interrogation variously designed to cause crushing injuries to the foot and/or leg. The boot has taken many forms in various places and times. Common varieties include the Spanish boot and the Malay boot. One type was made of four pieces of narrow wooden board nailed together. The boards were measured to fit the victim's leg. Once the leg was enclosed, wedges would be hammered between the boards, creating pressure. The pressure would be increased until the victim confessed or lost consciousness.
Caning is a form of corporal punishment consisting of a number of hits with a single cane usually made of rattan, generally applied to the offender's bare or clothed buttocks or hands. Caning on the knuckles or shoulders is much less common. Caning can also be applied to the soles of the feet. The size and flexibility of the cane and the mode of application, as well as the number of the strokes, may vary.
Public humiliation or public shaming is a form of punishment whose main feature is dishonoring or disgracing a person, usually an offender or a prisoner, especially in a public place. It was regularly used as a form of judicially sanctioned punishment in previous centuries, and is still practiced by different means in the modern era.
Fort Breendonk is a former military installation at Breendonk, near Mechelen, Belgium, which served as a Nazi prison camp (Auffanglager) during the German occupation of Belgium during World War II.
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a 1975 book by French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age based on historical documents from France. Foucault argues that prison did not become the principal form of punishment just because of the humanitarian concerns of reformists. He traces the cultural shifts that led to the predominance of prison via the body and power. Prison is used by the "disciplines" – new technological powers that can also be found, according to Foucault, in places such as schools, hospitals, and military barracks.
A stress position, also known as a submission position, is a form of punishment that places the human body in such a way that a great amount of weight is placed on very few muscles. For example, a subject may be forced to stand on the balls of their feet, then squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground. This creates an intense amount of pressure on the legs, leading first to pain and then rapid onset of muscle fatigue and tear.
The box, also known as a hot box or sweatbox, is a method of solitary confinement used in humid and arid regions as a method of punishment. Anyone placed in one would experience extreme heat, dehydration, heat exhaustion, or even death, depending on when and how long one was kept in the box. Another variation of this punishment is known as sweating, the use of a heated room to punish or coerce a person into cooperating with the torturers.
The Auburn system is an American penal method of the 19th century in which prisoners worked during the day in groups and were kept in solitary confinement at night, with enforced silence at all times. The silent system evolved during the 1820s at Auburn Prison in Auburn, New York, as an alternative to and modification of the Pennsylvania system of solitary confinement, which it quickly replaced in the United States. Whigs favored this system because it promised to rehabilitate criminals by teaching them personal discipline and respect for work, property, and other people. Most unique about this system, and most important to it, however, was the fact that it was supported by state-funded capitalism and was driven by profit. Soon after its development, New York State adopted this system with the help of Elam Lynds, agent and keeper of Auburn Prison, for its third state prison, Sing Sing Prison. Several other states followed suit shortly after and adopted the for-profit prison system designed in Auburn. By 1829, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. adopted the Auburn system. Within the next fifteen years, the system was used in prisons in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Upper Canada, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, Indiana, and Michigan.
White torture, often referred to as white room torture, is a type of psychological torture technique aimed at complete sensory deprivation and isolation. A prisoner is held in a cell, devoid of any color besides white, that is designed to deprive them of all senses and identity.
The widespread and systematic use of torture in Turkey goes back to the Ottoman Empire. After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, torture of civilians by the Turkish Armed Forces and Turkish police was widespread during the Dersim rebellion. The Sansaryan Han police headquarters and Harbiye Military Prison in Istanbul became known for torture in the 1940s. Amnesty International (AI) first documented Turkish torture after the 1971 Turkish coup d'état and has continued to issue critical reports, particularly after the outbreak of the Kurdish-Turkish conflict in the 1980s. The Committee for the Prevention of Torture has issued critical reports on the extent of torture in Turkey since the 1990s. The Stockholm Center for Freedom published a report entitled Mass Torture and Ill-Treatment in Turkey in June 2017. The Human Rights Foundation of Turkey estimates there are around one million victims of torture in Turkey.
The Disciplinary and Penal Code, also known as the Punishment Catalogue (Strafkatalog), was a set of regulations for prisoners at Nazi concentration camps. The code was first written for Dachau concentration camp and became the uniform code at all Schutzstaffel (SS) concentration camps in the Nazi Germany on 1 January 1934. Guards were instructed to report violations of the code to the camp commandant's office. The Concentration Camps Inspectorate was responsible for execution of the resulting punishment, which was carried out without verification of the allegations or any possibility of vindication.
