If we want America to stop torturing detainees, we must ask that America stop torturing its own citizens.
We will one day recognize the use of isolation in our super-max prisons as a violation of our own constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Only we’ve made the use of isolation so casual that it is no longer unusual – just cruel.
What’s worse: inflicting isolation does not work. It neither diminishes violence inside prisons nor does it reduce recidivism. As has happened in lesser civilizations, we have been wounded morally by some of the punishments we inflict and have gone slightly mad, in the process. Torture is madness – a seeming logic that is, in fact, unhinged from reality.
The more we torture, the more insane we become.