Prisoner abuse

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Prisoner abuse" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Criminology and penology
Theory Anomie Biosocial criminology Broken windows Collective efficacy Crime analysis Criminalization Differential association Deviance Expressive function of law Labeling theory Psychopathy Rational choice Risk & actuarial criminology Social control Social learning Strain Subculture Symbolic interactionism Victimology
Major theorists Émile Durkheim Hans Eysenck Enrico Ferri Michel Foucault Alexandre Lacassagne Cesare Lombroso Archibald Reiss
Types of crime Against Humanity Person State Class Blue-collar White-collar Cold case Perfect Corporate Hate International Juvenile Organized Political Public-order State State-corporate Transnational Victimless War
Methods Comparative Profiling Critical theory Ethnography Uniform Crime Reports Crime mapping Crime statistics Positivist school Qualitative Quantitative BJS NIBRS
Penology Denunciation Deterrence Incapacitation Trial Prison abolition open reform Prisoner Prisoner abuse Prisoners' rights Rehabilitation Recidivism Justice in penology Participatory Restorative Transformative Retributive Utilitarian Solitary confinement
Schools Anarchist Chicago Classical Conflict Critical Environmental Feminist Integrative Italian Marxist Neo-classical Positivist Postmodernist Realism Left Right
Subfields American Anthropological Biosocial criminology Conflict Criminology Critical Culture Cyber Demography Development Environmental Experimental Organizational Political Public Radical criminology
Browse Index Journals Organizations People
v t e

Part of a series on
Discrimination
Forms Institutional Structural Statistical Taste-based
Attributes Age Caste Class Dialect Disability Genetic Hair texture Height Language Looks Mental disorder Race / Ethnicity Skin color Scientific racism Rank Sex Sexual orientation Species Size Viewpoint
Social Arophobia Acephobia Adultism Anti-albinism Anti-autism Anti-homelessness Anti-drug addicts Anti-intellectualism Anti-intersex Anti-left handedness Anti-Masonry Aporophobia Audism Biphobia Clannism Elitism Ephebiphobia Social determinants of health Social determinants of health in poverty Social determinants of mental health Fatphobia Gayphobia Gerontophobia Heterosexism HIV/AIDS stigma Homophobia Leprosy stigma Lesbophobia Discrimination against men Misandry Misogyny Nepotism Pedophobia Perpetual foreigner Pregnancy Sectarianism Supremacism White Male Transphobia 21st-century anti-trans movement in the United Kingdom Non-binary Transmisogyny Trans men Vegaphobia Xenophobia
Religious Atheism Exclusivism Baháʼí Faith Buddhism Christianity Persecution Catholicism Eastern Orthodoxy Jehovah's Witnesses LDS or Mormon post–Cold War era Falun Gong Hinduism Persecution Untouchability Islam Persecution Ahmadiyya Shi'ism Sufism Sunnism minority Muslim Judaism Persecution Neopaganism Protestantism Rastafari Sikhism Yazidism Zoroastrianism
Ethnic/national Afghan African Albanian Arab Armenian Asian France South Africa United States Assyrian Azerbaijani Black people African Americans China South Africa Bengali Bulgarian Catalan Chechen Chinese Colombian Croat Filipino Fulani Finnish Georgian Greek Haitian Hazara Hungarian Igbo Indian Indigenous people Australia Canada United States Irish Italian Japanese Jewish Antisemitism New Korean Kurdish Lithuanian Malay Māori Mexican Middle Eastern Mongolian Nigerian Pakistani Palestinians Pashtun Polish Quebec Romani Romanian Scottish Serb Slavic Somali Tatar Thai Turkish Ukrainian Uyghur Venezuelan Vietnamese Welsh
Manifestations Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric SPLC-designated list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups Anti-LGBTQ movemenet in the US Anti-trans movement in the UK Anti-Zionism Blood libel Bullying Cancel culture Capital punishment for homosexuality Compulsory sterilization Corrective rape Counter-jihad Cultural genocide Defamation Democide Disability hate crime Dog whistle Domicide Economic Education Employment Eliminationism Enemy of the people Ethnic cleansing Ethnic conflict Ethnic hatred Ethnic joke Ethnocide Excellence Gender-based dress codes Cosmetics policy High heel policy Forced conversion Freak show Gay bashing Gendercide Genital modification and mutilation Genocide examples Glass ceiling Hate crime LGBTQ Hate group Hate speech Homeless dumping Housing Indian rolling Kill Haole Day Lavender scare LGBTQ grooming conspiracy theory List of people killed for being transgender Lynching Mortgage Murder music Native American mascots Occupational segregation Opposition to immigration Paper genocide Persecution Pogrom Political repression Purge Racialization Religious persecution Religious terrorism Religious violence Religious war Scapegoating Segregation academy Sexual harassment Sex-selective abortion Slut-shaming Trans bashing Victimisation Violence against women White flight White genocide conspiracy theory Wife selling Witch hunt
Policies Age of candidacy Blood purity Blood quantum Crime of apartheid Disabilities Catholic Jewish Gender pay gap Gender roles Gerontocracy Gerrymandering Ghetto benches Internment Jewish quota Law for Protection of the Nation MSM blood donation restrictions No kid zone Numerus clausus (as religious or racial quota) One-drop rule Racial quota Racial segregation Jim Crow laws Nuremberg Laws Racial steering Redlining Same-sex marriage (laws and issues prohibiting) Segregation age racial religious sexual Social exclusion Sodomy law State atheism State religion Ugly law Voter suppression
Countermeasures Affirmative action Anti-discrimination law Anti-racism Constitutional colorblindness Cultural assimilation Cultural pluralism Diversity, equity, and inclusion Diversity training Empowerment Fat acceptance movement Feminism Fighting Discrimination Hate speech laws by country Human rights Intersex human rights LGBT rights Nonviolence Racial integration Reappropriation Self-determination Social integration Toleration
Related topics Allophilia Amatonormativity Bias Cisnormativity Civil liberties Dehumanization Diversity Multiculturalism Neurodiversity Ethnic penalty Figleaf Gender-blind Heteronormativity Historical eugenics Internalized oppression Intersectionality Masculism Medical model of disability autism Net bias Oikophobia Oppression Police brutality Political correctness Polyculturalism Power distance Prejudice Prisoner abuse Racial bias in criminal news in the United States Racism by country Racial color blindness Religious intolerance Reverse discrimination Reverse racism Second-generation gender bias Snobbery Social exclusion Social identity threat Social model of disability Social privilege Christian male white Social stigma Speciesism Stereotype threat The talk
v t e

Prisoner abuse is the mistreatment of persons while they are under arrest or incarcerated. Prisoner abuse can include physical abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, torture, or other acts such as refusal of essential medication, and it can be perpetuated by either fellow inmates or prison faculty.^[1]

Physical abuse of prisoners includes illicit beating and hitting of prisoners, unlawful corporal punishment, stress positions, and excessive or prolonged physical restraining.

According to the New York Times, along with physical abuse, prisoners are being thrown into jail for mental illnesses that they obtain and not being treated for them. This causes their issues to get worse and in some cases never get better. Also, relating to physical abuse the mentally ill can be thrown into restrained areas for a long amount of time because of their mental condition, this means that these mentally ill people do not have the resources to get better in the jail.

This is also caused by overpopulation in jails. Penal Reform International claims, that overcrowding in the main source of poor jail conditions globally. This caused overcrowding and understaffing: one of the reasons why there can sometimes be 2–3 people in the same jail cell for a long period of time. This causes a lack of privacy and because the jails are so overcrowded some minor cases are cut from the justice system altogether.

According to the Marshall Plan, there are also many gangs that are formed in different prisons which cause chaos and force the jail to go through many lockdowns which are a vulnerable time for the prison guards especially when they are understaffed. It also says that the prisoners and the prison guards have to be safe, which caused the guards to be defensive and sometimes abusive.

Psychological abuse of prisoners can include verbal abuse, sleep deprivation, white noise, pointless/absurd or humiliating instructions, recurrent exhaustive inspections and shakedowns, arbitrary strip searches, and denuding actions.

According to Reflexions, prison can alter people's bodily dimensions, their emotional wellbeing, and possibly change their perception for an extended amount of time. It also claims that not only does the prison environment make mental disorders worse, but it also may cause them. The type of prison environment can be cruel and if the prisoner does not have the mental, emotional, and physical willpower they will struggle very greatly.

The endless playing of random static (similar to that of unused TV frequencies) with no pattern; this can cause extreme discomfort and disorientation.

Prisoners may be subject to taunting, heckling, profanity, and malicious lies by prison authorities. Guards and other authorities may use verbal abuse as a means of frightening or demoralizing prisoners to make them more compliant, or simply out of sadism.

Prisoners are sometimes intentionally housed with inmates known to have raped other prisoners, or protection from known rapists may be purposely withheld from the prisoners. These practices create a very high incidence of rape in US prisons, which was the topic of the 2001 report No Escape from Human Rights Watch.^[2][3]

Sexual abuse is known to occur in facilities for both genders, however it is especially predominant with female prisoners. Common acts can include arbitrary and extensive strip searches as well as other forms of forced denudation beyond general necessity, excessive vaginal or rectal contraband searches or other internal checks including the oral cavity of a prisoner. In extreme cases even forced insertion of objects into the inmate's vagina or rectum and also forced sexual intercourse is known to occur mostly on female detainees.

The experience of forced strip searches can be experienced as a traumatic event similarly to that of rape especially by female prisoners, especially when combined with habitual body cavity searches. The prevalence of CCTV in modern correctional facilities and the generally indiscreet nature of strip searches, often with a number of prison guards observing, usually adds to the experienced humiliation. Strip searches are often arbitrarily used under various pretences, when the actual ambition is to assert control and predominance as well as to intimidate the subjected prison inmates.^[4]

Torture of prisoners includes any act, whether physical or psychological, which is deliberately done to inflict sensations of pain upon a person under the actor's custody or physical control. This form of prisoner abuse is usually exerted to extract information, but also as means of intimidation, attrition or punishment.

"Enhanced interrogation" is a euphemism for U.S. torture methods implemented in the War on Terror purportedly needed to extract information from detainees. Examples include use of stress positions, sleep deprivation, starvation, thirst, and sexual humiliation.^[5]

According to international laws, a State is liable to ensure prisoners' right to receive health care. Prison authorities are fully responsible to provide proper medical treatment to the detainees and ensure their well-being.^[6]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the overcrowded Jaw prison of Bahrain witnessed a major COVID-19 outbreak. Several prisoners were confirmed to be infected with the virus, while the authorities failed to facilitate them with proper preventive medical supplies, including face masks or hand sanitizers, and conducting regular screening tests. The authorities fell short of ensuring prisoners' rights to health and following the rules of treating prisoners. One of the main concerns had been the extensive population of the prison, which made social distancing impossible.^[7] On 9 June 2021, an inmate of Jaw prison, Husain Barakat, died due to COVID-19 complications.^[8] Even after the pandemic, Bahrain's Jaw prison remained controversial, where prisoners' rights of health continued to be violated. In June 2022, Amnesty International reported that Bahraini authorities failed to respond to the inmates suffering with tuberculosis. Prison authorities constantly disregarded the prisoners with symptoms and did not allow them to get tested for the airborne disease. Some of the prisoners were called back to the prison after they were confirmed of being infected in the hospital. One of the prisoners, Ahmed Jaber, was not sent to the hospital until he was semi-paralysed after being sick for 11 months.^[9]

• Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
• Prisoner abuse in the United States
• Prison overcrowding
• Extermination through labor
• Penal harm
• Police misconduct
• Prisoners' rights
• Death in custody
• Stun belt

• Gates, Madison L. and Robert K. Bradford. "The Impact of Incarceration on Obesity: Are Prisoners with Chronic Diseases Becoming Overweight and Obese during Their Confinement?" Journal of Obesity. 2015; 2015: 532468. Published online 2015 Mar 18. doi:10.1155/2015/532468.