Justice, Context, and Violence: Law Enforcement Officers on Why They Torture

• Date: 01 December 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12108
• Published date: 01 December 2014

Justice, Context, and Violence: Law Enforcement

Officers on Why They Torture

Rachel Wahl

How do police explain their support for torture? Findings from 12 months of

fieldwork with police in India complicate previous researchers’ claims that

violence workers tend to morally disengage and blame circumstances for their

actions. The officers in this study engage in moral reflection on torture,

drawing on their beliefs about human nature and justice to explain their

support for it. They admit that they use torture more widely than their own

conceptions of justice allow, but see this as an imperfect implementation of

their principles rather than as a violation of them. Previous research on the

spread of human rights norms has focused on how these norms can be

adapted to the local beliefs that support them, rather than on understanding

the beliefs that conflict with human rights. I argue that illuminating the

self-understanding of state actors who support or engage in torture is crucial

to building theory on why such violence occurs, as well as to designing

interventions to prevent it.

Hannah Arendt famously wrote of the “banality of evil.” She

meant that atrocities are committed not by people who are excep-

tional in their monstrousness, but those who are disconcertingly

normal. Their acts result not from evil intentions, but by a failure

of any moral engagement; a failure, Arendt says, “to think” (1963).

Research on the use of torture by the police and military has

followed suit. Torturers are not radically different from the rest of

society, and nor are they motivated by long-standing personal

enmity toward the people they victimize, many researchers argue.

Rather, they are transformed through socialization processes

I gratefully acknowledge the valuable feedback provided by the following people: Dana

Burde, Assistant Professor of International Education at New YorkUniversity; Jack Snyder,

Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations at Columbia University; Jinee

Lokaneeta, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Drew University; Benjamin Gregg,

Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin; Rene Arcilla,

Professor of Philosophy of Education at New York University; and Danya Reda, Acting

Assistant Professor of Lawyering at New York University School of Law.

Please direct all correspondence to Rachel Wahl, Program in Social Foundations,

Department of Leadership, Foundations, and Policy,Curry School of Education, University

of Virginia, Ruffner Hall, Room 280, 405 Emmet Street South, Charlottesville, VA 22902;

e-mail: rlw4ck@virginia.edu.

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Law & Society Review, Volume 48, Number 4 (2014)

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that encourage moral disengagement. These two factors—moral

disengagement and circumstances that socialize violence—are keys

in producing torturers, according to researchers (e.g., Huggins,

Haritos-Fatouros, and Zimbardo 2002).

It is unclear, however, how those who commit or contribute to

torture through their support of it understand what they do. To

examine this question, this study draws from in-depth interviews

with law enforcement officers who were participating in human

rights education in India. I examine these officers’ moral beliefs,

their perceptions of the circumstances in which they work, and how

these beliefs and perceptions inform their judgments on the use of

torture and related violence.

The findings from this study complicate previous conclu-

sions regarding the way police understand and explain the use of

torture, and more broadly, how people who support violence justify

this support to themselves and others. First, my research suggests

that officers’ justifications for torture are more than morally disen-

gaged rationalizations and are in fact consistent with their moral

worldviews. Second, my research shows how officers’ interpreta-

tions of the circumstances in which they work contribute to their

view that torture is justified even beyond the violence that could be

supported by their own moral beliefs.

The study is motivated by the premise that insight into the

self-understanding of those who commit and support torture is

crucial not only to theory on violence but also to the design of

interventions to prevent it. A key means by which human rights

activists and other reformers combat torture is through education

for police and security officers. The current phase of the United

Nations World Programme for Human Rights Education, for

example, prioritizes education for these groups. But in order to

persuade people to behave differently, it is crucial to understand

how they defend their current behavior. In the case of police

violence, it is especially important to understand both officers’

beliefs about what is right as well as whether and how they believe

they can act on their beliefs.

Most of the human rights educators interviewed for this study

assume that officers violate rights for what even the police would

agree are immoral reasons, such as to receive a bribe, or amoral

reasons, such as a lack of training. Although the police do use

torture for these reasons, they admit that it is wrong to do so.

Missing from this understanding are the reasons for which police

believe it is right to use torture.

Human rights activists’ relative neglect of perpetrators’ moral

beliefs is understandable. The human rights movement is premised

on the universality of its principles. A focus on the moral beliefs

that conflict with these principles may seem to compromise the

808 Justice, Context, and Violence