The Story of Cruel and Unusual (Boston Review Books) - Hardcover

Dayan, Colin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262042398 ISBN 13: 9780262042390

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2007

Synopsis

A searing indictment of the American penal system that finds the roots of the recent prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo in the steady dismantling of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment.

The revelations of prisoner abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib and more recently at Guantánamo were shocking to most Americans. And those who condemned the treatment of prisoners abroad have focused on U.S. military procedures and abuses of executive powers in the war on terror, or, more specifically, on the now-famous White House legal counsel memos on the acceptable limits of torture. But in The Story of Cruel and Unusual, Colin Dayan argues that anyone who has followed U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding the Eighth Amendment prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment would recognize the prisoners' treatment at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo as a natural extension of the language of our courts and practices in U.S. prisons. In fact, it was no coincidence that White House legal counsel referred to a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1980s and 1990s in making its case for torture.Dayan traces the roots of "acceptable" torture to slave codes of the nineteenth century that deeply embedded the dehumanization of the incarcerated in our legal system. Although the Eighth Amendment was interpreted generously during the prisoners' rights movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, this period of judicial concern was an anomaly. Over the last thirty years, Supreme Court decisions have once again dismantled Eighth Amendment protections and rendered such words as "cruel" and "inhuman" meaningless when applied to conditions of confinement and treatment during detention. Prisoners' actual pain and suffering have been explained away in a rhetorical haze―with rationalizations, for example, that measure cruelty not by the pain or suffering inflicted, but by the intent of the person who inflicted it. The Story of Cruel and Unusual is a stunningly original work of legal scholarship, and a searing indictment of the U.S. penal system.

About this title

About the Author:

Colin Dayan is Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of, most recently, Haiti, History, and the Gods and is completing Held in the Body of the State, forthcoming.

From Booklist:

The Iraqi war and the U.S. war on terror have brought the issue of torture to the forefront. Have our actions become too similar to those we have defined as terrorists? Current Bush administration policy as well as recent Supreme Court rulings and interpretations of cruel and unusual punishment have strained Eighth Amendment protections, particularly for those defined as "criminal" and by extension for illegal enemy combatants and others outside the protected class. Humanities professor Dayan traces the history of the debate about punishment to slavery in the American colonies, when inhumane punishment was permitted as long as it was administered humanely, with the judgment regarding cruelty always favoring the slaveholder's interest over the slave's. Post-Reconstruction, the debate about humane punishment shifted from slaves to criminals, who were not extended the equal protection now purportedly extended to others. Dayan maintains that our history of slavery and dehumanization of the imprisoned have created the climate of tolerance toward abuse and torture revealed at Abu Ghraib. Vernon Ford
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About this edition

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0262042398
• ISBN 13: 9780262042390
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128