Torture as an Element of Social Control in the 21st Century (Political and Legal Aspects)

Abstract

The paper is focused on research of the phenomenon of torture in the XXI century. In the paper, the author presents a thesis that explains not only the resumption of torture as a phenomenon in the second half of the XX century but also spreading of the phenomenon of torture in the XXI century with corresponding dispersal of social control networks and, consequently, increasing of types of deviants. National criminal justice systems cannot cope with this task – to deal with deviants only within the formal procedures enshrined in national law against the background of increasing types and, consequently, the number of deviants. The article emphasizes that in the XXI century society torture exists within two interrelated political spheres, where the first of the spheres is a formalized policy of combating torture, which is shaped and implemented within universal regional and national structures. The second one is an informal torture policy, which is shaped within the framework of post-modern modulation of panoptic risk management, where torture is an instrument of modern social control. While criticizing the institutional and formal-instrumental approaches to the identification of the problem of torture and inhuman treatment in the XXI century and the solution of this problem, it is noted that these approaches are insufficient in their autonomous meaning. The dominance of institutional and instrumental approaches in the formation and implementation of policies of prevention of torture and the acquisition of monopoly characteristics by these approaches poses a problem in advance at the beginning of the strategy. Torture is primarily a political issue, and addressing it requires an analysis of the practice of torture as an impersonal policy with relevant statistical indicators that are now almost non-existent at both the international and national levels.