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--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector- http://www.charleston.net/stories/050804/ter_08abuse.shtml Story last updated at 7:14 a.m. Saturday, May 8, 2004 How do solid citizens become torturers? BY JEFF DONN Associated PressThey appear to be mostly ordinary Americans: sons and daughters of small towns, committed parents, a mechanic, a fisherman, a parade volunteer. The Army may append another line to each of their dossiers: tormenter of helpless prisoners. Can a largely unremarkable assortment of decent Americans put on uniforms, cross the globe and somehow descend into leering sadists once inside a sweaty, teeming prison near Baghdad? Yes, they can, according to researchers who study the psychological dynamics of prisons. And it could happen to many more of us, if thrust into the same kind of dysfunctional surroundings. Researchers say the climate of combat, harsh conditions of the prison, cultural chasm between keeper and kept, and possible breakdown in command are all levers that could have tipped some soldiers over the brink. "I would put it more in terms of opportunity," said Bert Useem, a University of New Mexico sociologist and prison researcher. "Really what you have to explain is not so much the aberrant psychology ... but the fact that they had the opportunity to act on these impulses." He added that, judging from many accounts, this prison appears to be "a system out of control." First shown April 28 in a CBS News report, the photographs from inside the American-run prison have stirred disgust and outrage across the Arab world and beyond and revulsion in the United States, too. Characterizing it as an aberration, President Bush has extended an apology and pledged to punish wrongdoers. Six soldiers have been charged with crimes; seven have been reprimanded. The military and CIA are pursuing an expanding set of inquiries into treatment of prisoners at that prison and elsewhere. Some of the accused soldiers had been guards in civilian prisons. But most relatives and friends certainly can't picture them as brutes. Some view them instead as scapegoats, doing what they were told and now paying for the mistakes of higher-ups. Some of these soldiers say they were encouraged by intelligence officers. Others who worked at the prison tell of overcrowding, scant food and sanitation, little guidance, long and mind-numbing shifts, and defiant rock-throwing prisoners who might be insurgents or violent criminals. Specialists say the dominating power of guards over prisoners, exercised outside public view, bears an inherent possibility of maltreatment almost anywhere. Guards confront real dangers and obstacles in controlling prisoners. Prisoners are inevitably degraded and devalued, to an extent, by their captivity, making them more likely targets. Guards have legitimate reasons to establish their authority, and the line between bossing and brutalizing can blur. In a classic psychological test in 1971, ordinary college students picked by coin toss to play guards in a mock prison were treating pretend prisoners as animals within a week. The experimenter, Philip Zimbardo, was quoted as saying his experiment seemed temporarily to blot out the experiences of a lifetime, "and the ugliest, most base, pathological side of human nature surfaced." While excesses are not inevitable, "the literature of social psychology shows ordinary people can become cruel and abusive when given absolute power and authority over others," said Lt. Col. Thomas Kolditz, head of West Point's department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership. Obviously, not everyone sinks into the darkness, even in abusive settings. We are not all created equal in this way, researchers acknowledge. A personal history of maltreatment or violence tends to make someone more prone to buckle. Conversely, future soldiers and guards are stiffened by a strong moral grounding from parents and teachers. At Abu Ghraib, at least one soldier exposed the atrocities, and others reportedly helped investigators figure out what happened. Researchers say most civilian and military guards generally respect rules protecting prisoners. Indeed, some evidence suggests at least civilian prisons have become safer overall during the past 20 years, with less maltreatment by guards, according to researchers. But they credit organizational changes, more than shifts in the mind-set of guards, for driving the progress. "To understand the reasons ... for bad behavior by guards, you don't have to imagine that everybody is a sadist," said New York University professor David Garland, a specialist in prison sociology. "The best-run prisons are established institutions that tend to be stable over time, with their own culture. A brand-new prison filled up with new inmates and guards is going to be a tinderbox." Several experts stressed weak leadership, the sense that no one is really watching, as key in dissolving a guard's inhibitions. "Nothing substitutes for fair, sound administration, and, in my mind, that's what leads to mistreatment," said political scientist Michael Reisig of Michigan State University, who has studied how prisons are run. The horror and hardships of wartime can further smear the boundaries of human decency in a military-run prison. The captives are not just prisoners; they are the enemy. Sometimes, a soldier will do something as part of a military unit that he would never do alone. "You put bright, healthy, strong young Americans into a very difficult context, and it requires extraordinary strength of character not to get somewhat twisted out of shape," said James Campbell Quick, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of Texas at Arlington and a retired colonel in the Air Force Reserve. "War is a horrific kind of experience. It is in no way normal or healthy." Experts on managing prisoners also say cultural differences such as those at Abu Ghraib can amplify the potential for conflict with guards. Arab norms tend to be especially attuned to honor, face-saving and sexual modesty, by the standards of many Americans. The disparities are likely to magnify tensions, especially in times of combat and without civilian courts peering over a guard's shoulder. "The very idea that not only would people do these things, but also take the pictures also says something about the culture" of guards inside the prison, said Ervin Staub, a University of Massachusetts-Amherst psychologist who has trained police and soldiers in dealing sensitively with other groups. "People are not saying, 'We are doing this on the sneak; it's a bad thing to do.' It has already become normal ... to some degree at least." More than anything, some researchers say, prison atrocities are prevented by engaged managers who keep close watch. They are the ones who lay down clear standards and enforce them. When they fail, they put guards in an extraordinary place of both menace and power, unguarded. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. 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