The Story of Cruel and Unusual

Colin Dayan (Robert Penn Warren Professor, Vanderbilt University)

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English

MIT Press
30 April 2024

Penology & punishment; Political control & freedoms

Series: Boston Review Books

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

A searing indictment of the American penal system that finds the roots of the recent prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo 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 Guantanamo 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 Guantanamo 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.

By: Colin Dayan (Robert Penn Warren Professor Vanderbilt University)
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 178mm, Width: 114mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262551960
ISBN 10: 0262551969
Series: Boston Review Books
Pages: 128
Publication Date: 30 April 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.