Prison Abuse

Read this article about a prison simulation at Stanford in 1971. It is chilling how eerily the actions of those taking part in the study mimicked what happened at Abu Ghraib.

Two days into the good doctor's experiment, the normal, adjusted students were playing their prison roles with frightening reality. The "prisoners," fed up with having roll calls in the middle of the night, rebelled by pushing their beds against their cell bars and refusing to come out. The "guards" called in reinforcements, pulled the prisoners from their cells, striped them naked, and proceeded to humiliate and abuse them for hours. To further reinforce their power, the guards took away bathroom privileges and forced prisoners to urinate and defecate in buckets inside their cells, and to later clean the mess out with their bare hands. It got worse — so bad that Zimbardo halted the planned two-week study after only six days.

The aphorism that power corrupts certainly seems validated by both this study and the actual events at Abu Ghraib. Any time someone is given life or death power over someone else a very dangerous situation can occur where the powerless gradually lose their humanity in the eyes of the powerful. This occurs in prisons, both military and civilian, with soldiers and policemen. The only way to combat this trend is discipline. At every step up and down the chain of command discipline must be enforced and any infractions treated seriously. This is one reason why military justice and codes of conduct are so much harsher than our civilian system. It is to keep our soldiers professionals so we can trust them with the power that we give them. By all accounts discipline of the soldiers was lax at Abu Ghraib. I hope that the Abu Ghraib story becomes a part of officer’s training as an example of why strict discipline is so needed in our Armed Forces (it would be nice if this also prompted us to do something about the deplorable conditions in our domestic prisons as well.) lax at Abu Ghraib. I hope that the Abu Ghraib story becomes a part of officer’s training as an example of why strict discipline is so needed in our Armed Forces (it would be nice if this also prompted us to do something about the deplorable conditions in our domestic prisons as well.)