Chapter 12 – Investigating Allegations of Police Torture: Forensic Protocols and Psychological Assessment

When acts of torture are used, sponsored, or tolerated by government agents, it is an abuse of authority. What's more, it is an effective demonstration of cruelty evidencing cultural and institutional tyranny. This is perhaps why there is no better mechanism for inducing resentment, mistrust, and then active resistance from those who suffer its effects. It also renders any information subsequently gathered completely unreliable—to include accusations and confessions alike. The results of torture are not just lawfully inadmissible, but empirically untrustworthy. Those conducting assessments of the use of force by government agents, including allegations of torture, must therefore be educated in the basic principles of human psychology and human rights; trained on the various mechanisms and effects of torture; and sufficiently independent from the government to avoid bias or coercion when gathering evidence and rendering expert findings. They must also ask the right questions and properly document the answers. In the absences of these conditions, use of force assessments is itself unreliable and should be viewed with all of the skepticism that good science mandates.