Witchcraft trials. Lynchings. The Soviet “Great Purge.” Mid-20th century European fascism. Guantánamo. Abu Ghraib. El Salvador. Torture seems always “over there” or “back then.”
Sadly, however, it is far more current, nearby, and common than we’d like to believe. Federal and state prisons in the US routinely employ practices recognized as torture or inhumane treatment. And many scholars, activists, and people with lived experience identify torture as a regular feature of US carceral systems.
The United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment — “Convention Against Torture” or “CAT” — was adopted in 1984. The US ratified it in 1988. Year after year since then, reports to the UN detail allegations of torture in US carceral systems; year after year, the US reports back on steps it is taking — or, in some cases, refuses to take — to investigate, address problem incidents and systems, and hold those responsible accountable.
Meanwhile, legal and social science scholarship often notes that intention, which distinguishes torture from other inhumane treatment in international law, is difficult to prove and rarely essential to those experiencing US carceral systems. Instead, scholars direct attention to observable conditions and behavior.
International Day in Support of Victims of Torture is observed on 26 June to speak out against torture and to honor and support victims and survivors throughout the world. The observance was launched by the UN in 1998. The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) has been organizing faith communities to learn and act during “Torture Awareness Month” since June 2006.
Over the years, the work of NRCAT, and that of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights (formerly: Rabbis for Human Rights-NA), expanded to include solitary confinement and mass incarceration in the US as well as on-going detention at the US-held Guantánamo Bay prison and other distant locations.
Materials on this page — Rereading4Liberation — begin to explore Jewish teachings in relationship to our responsibility to dismantle the harmful US carceral systems and their white supremacist underpinnings.
Everyday Use of Torture in US Prisons
Prisons in the United States regularly confine people to isolation in cells about the size of a parking space — known as “solitary confinement,” “segregated housing,” “maximum security,” and many other names — for a variety of reasons. This has long been recognized as a form of torture. NRCAT and T’ruah share many related resources and action tool kits. Other forms of torture routinely used within US prisons get less attention.
Some forms of torture that are regularly experienced by incarcerated people in the US:
- excessive use of force
- painful restraints, often for routine holding and transportation
- stun technology
- chemical agents
- forced labor
- strip cells and forced nudity
- sexual violence
- withholding of food and water (separate from other food justice issues)
- crowding, lack of hygiene and unsanitary conditions
- exposure to excessive light and noise
- denial of medical treatment
- denial of legal counsel
- racial and ethnic slurs
- retaliatory treatment of political prisoners and those filing grievances regarding rights violations
All of the above are detailed, for example, in Survivors Speak: Prisoner Testimonies of Torture in United States Prisons and Jails, A Shadow Report Submitted for the November 2014 Review of the United States by the Committee Against Torture,” prepared by American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in 2014. Related reports, through early 2025, indicate these are still regular experiences in US prisons. Here are just a few sources for to learn more:
- UN reports human rights violations at home and abroad (Truthout 2023);
- human rights violations, racism in the criminal justice system (Reuters 2023)
- on forced labor (Common Dreams 2023); on use of chemical agents (Truthout 2016)
Reports from Red Onion State Prison and other locations include attacks by dogs. See also reports on food justice and failures to honor religious diet. Another category of concern involves psychological and spiritual impact of executions and related announcements on those currently on Death Row. See, e.g., Lee Kovarsky, “Suffering before execution.”
“Rewriting Torture: Manufacturing a Primer of Abuse in US Domestic Prisons” offers a comparison between widely condemned torture in Abu Ghraib, as detailed by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and well-documented conditions in US prisons (See PDF or below).
Details from Inside on Everyday Use of Torture
The following is based on reports from Interfaith Action for Human Rights (IAHR; DC, MD, VA area), Matir Asurim: Jewish Care Network for Incarcerated People (MA; US and Canada), other advocates, and from related research.
Multi-Category Torture
One concerning situation reported by IAHR is that at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia. A substantial portion of those held at Red Onion are in solitary confinement, which is addressed in other NRCAT materials. In addition, Red Onion has been the source of continuing reports of racism and abuse. In April 2025, two men who had been most vocal about conditions and treatment at Red Onion were transferred out of state just as official investigation was finally underway (Prison Radio, April 25, 2025). Here is some background, from a late 2024 report from MA:
On Dec, Prison Radio posted a commentary, in which Demetrius Wallace describes “abuse, racism, neglect, and retaliation prisoners have been enduring for years,” at Red Onion State Prison. Conditions continued so horrible and were ignored for so long, that he engaged in self-immolation out of desperation. “I Set Myself on Fire,” read by Kevin Rashid Johnson.
After weeks of reporting from Prison Radio and advocacy by Interfaith Action for Human Rights and others, stories of Red Onion State Prison have gotten some national and international attention: New York Times (US) (December 1) and The Guardian (UK) (November 30) followed Al Jazeera (November 27). Prior stories were offered by Virginia Public Radio, SF Bay View, and Latin Times.
STILL, the horrific abuse continues, incarcerated people continue to suffer retaliation for speaking out, and advocates continue to demand: A full investigation into the human rights violations and endemic racism at Red Onion State Prison. An end to solitary confinement, beatings, and retaliation. The transfer of those in need of medical care. And the closure of these torturous facilities.
Strip Cells
“Strip cell” can refer to a cell without toilet or sink and/or to the practice of removing basics, including bedding and sometimes clothing, from a cell. This leaves the incarcerated person on cold, often filthy flooring and without protection from the elements; lack of hygienic facilities add to experiences of degradation and physical discomfort. Sometimes this is officially justified as part of psychiatric observation, sometimes as a response to minor infractions of rules. Courts have ruled the practice unconstitutional, but reports of its use persist. It is employed for intimidation and retaliation, frequently to punish “trouble makers,” i.e., those who advocate for their own and others’ rights by filing grievances.
A member of MA reported in November 2024:
[I hear from] men who have been beaten, sprayed with chemical agents and tortured in strip cells under the guise of property restrictions. Yes, placed in cells where they’ve taken everything including the men’s mattress, blanket and clothing and leaving them to endure cold temperatures, because they’ve pissed off some officer, or had a minor rule violation. I listened to stories of grown men crying, because they’re freezing in unconstitutional strip cells. Tortured beyond anything you can imagine. Believe me, I know what its like! — from inside Florida Department of Corrections
See also: Prison Legal News (2007) and Incarcerated Worker (2017).
Alt Text 1: Search for prison transport supplies shows dozens of private companies offering “cages.” Screenshot displays a dozen varieties of human caging equipment and an ad from “Custom Cages, Inc.
Alt Text 2: “Awaiting therapy: Prisoners in cages await group therapy, Mule Creek State Prison.” Photo from 2013 US District Court Briefing. Found in SFBayView.com article “Motion Denied.” ID: Five individuals in prison jumpsuits in five separate, adjacent cages, each the size of a phone booth.
Transportation and Holding
Many prisoners are caged and otherwise restrained for transportation between facilities, including to and from hospitals. In addition, awaiting appointments, including medical, mental health, and spiritual counseling, can involve long periods in constricted “holding” locations, with additional restraints. Moreover, moving individuals between facilities — often on short or no notice — separates individuals from family and legal support, classes and programmatic support, possessions, and, often, basic orienting information (where they are going, for how long, and why).
Holding can require enduring torture in order to receive mental health support or spiritual counseling and leave individuals in physical positions that worsen medical conditions for which care is sought.
For example, this man imprisoned in Florida needed post-operative physical therapy. Obtaining needed care involved hours in transport and holding that the negated positive effects of therapy and further damaged his knee:
On Tuesday 11/26/24 I spent 9 grueling hours in a 2 by 2 foot cage at the notorious RMC (Regional Medical Center). It’s a cage inside of a cage. There’s a toilet and urinal, neither works, so as soon as you step through the solid steel door into this cage, the stench of piss offends your nostrils. Once you step inside this tiny 2 foot by 2 foot cage with a wooden bench seat, it’s sitting or standing room only. You should try it. There’s no room to move! Especially for someone like myself who’s 6’4. — Florida prisoner, reporting to MA
Transfer of facilityoften involves “extremely small spaces within the transport vehicle, shared with an excessive number of other prisoners, in poor and unsafe conditions, sometimes for prolonged periods.” — UN Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights 2019.
US journalism and inside reports detail conditions similar to those in this European factsheet:
On a number of occasions, CPT delegations have inspected vehicles intended for the transport of detainees, such as road and railway vehicles. They frequently found that conditions were substandard or that basic safety requirements were not being met. The Committee has also come across practices which called for criticism (e.g. overreliance on means of restraint; unnecessarily long periods of confinement in prisoner transport vehicles). — from The European Committee on the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment
See, e.g, Prison Journalism Project, 2024:
The black box was the most torturous part of the trip. Imagine the old pillories that offenders once put their head and wrists into before being bombarded with fruit and rocks. Now remove the head hole, shrink the entire contraption to about the size of a Milk Duds box and you’ll have an idea what I’m talking about.
From Truthout, “On the Draft” 2015:
On the draft, a prisoner’s ankles are shackled together and their wrists handcuffed, then all four limbs are chained together. The handcuffs are then placed in a plastic box, which drastically limits their range of motion. The box is designed to prevent lock-picking or violence, but holds the wrists at a painful angle. Finally, the prisoner is shackled to another prisoner being transported; they will not be unlinked even during bathroom breaks.
The result is hours or days spent hunched, never more than a foot from a stranger – a position that every former prisoner I spoke with described as intensely uncomfortable. Tim Burgess told me that he and other prisoners learned to throw McDonald’s French fries or chunks of hamburger into their mouths on meal breaks because it was the only way it was possible to successfully eat with the chains and boxes on their wrists.
A Texas prisoner reported:] “[They] ‘hog-tied’ us with cuffs, loop-to-feet shackles, and we had to walk stooped over in this humiliating, painful condition. My cuffs/shackles were so tight that it was cutting off my circulation, and one of my hands got numb.”
In addition to suffering degrading and painful restraints, individuals have endured sexual assault and died in transport:
Since 2012, at least four people, including [Florida prisoner Steven] Galack, have died on private extradition vans, all of them run by the Tennessee-based Prisoner Transportation Services. In one case, a Mississippi man complained of pain for a day and a half before dying from an ulcer. In another, a Kentucky woman suffered a fatal withdrawal from anti-anxiety medication. And in another, guards mocked a prisoner’s pain before he, too, died from a perforated ulcer.
These vans do not have prisoner beds, toilets or medical services. Violent felons are mixed with first-time suspects. A plexiglass divider is usually the only thing separating women from men. At least 14 women have alleged in criminal or civil court since 2000 that they were sexually assaulted by guards while being transported by these companies.
“Just stay in jail. It’s better,” said Lauren Sierra, 21, who said she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a guard in 2014 while being transported by US Corrections, a rapidly growing company registered in North Carolina. — report from The Marshall Project
Death Row
Individuals arrive on Death Row due to factors unrelated to any crime for which they are convicted, rightfully or wrongfully. “Legally irrelevant factors such as race, geography, and the quality of counsel disproportionately determine who is sentenced to death,” according to Death Penalty Information Center. Inequities in our carceral systems serve to devalue many lives, but arbitrariness in death sentences inflicts particular harm on condemned people and their loved ones.
Once on Death Row, incarcerated individuals experience many of the forms of torture listed above. They face additional “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, however. The particular experience can lead to psychological disorders known as “Death Row Phenomenon.” In addition, some of what is experienced on Death Row are extreme examples of challenges common across carceral settings:
- Families of incarcerated people face many indignities, for example, but learning via public internet post that a spouse’s death warrant was signed is another level of cruel. (See also mental health for Death Row families.)
- Rehabilitation focused on creating “productive members of society” is objectifying in many settings, but declaring GED study unnecessary for people on Death Row because they “won’t be returning to society” (ruling successfully challenged) is another level of inhuman.
- Much discussion of criminality in the US equates whole lives with specific mistakes; in capital crimes, however, a person’s entire life is regularly reduced to the worst thing they did or experienced, regardless of subsequent repentance and attempts at repair — this degradation takes a toll, in itself, and leads to further maltreatment within the system.
Moreover, the signing of death warrants and the conduct of executions exact a deep psychological toll on all concerned. A brief sampling of related communications from inside and from outside:
[from inside] These death warrants! My neighbor now, well I’m seeing the mental duress that its taking on him. I had a dream the other night about another warrant, but none of us knew the name…. So they came and got Mike late Monday night, and they have him scheduled to be killed…It’s stressful around here. I’m so tired.
[from outside] They didn’t sit where I sat. They didn’t see you become the kind of man the world begs for and then throws away.
[from inside] They came for Anthony on Friday. I haven’t got used to not hearing his voice. I haven’t spoken all day.
[from outside] It would be just a simple act of vengeance to kill this man now, 20 years later, when he’s a different person…
[from inside] I will testify to the mental anguish that I’ve seen these men and their families be put through while being helplessly held captive on Florida’s death row. Let’s mean what we say and say what we mean, and let’s seek JUSTICE FOR ALL, and not vengeance for some. The time for change is here and now. And you can’t straddle the fence, your either for the death penalty, or against it. And any silence on your behalf, is support for these inhumane premeditated murders. You have a voice, and you have the choice to say something rather than do nothing. What will it be?
Thinkers from a variety of traditions note that execution reflects, and further fosters, warped ideas of justice. Pope Francis (12/17/1936 – 4/21/25), for example, wrote: “[Executions] far from bringing justice, fuel a sense of revenge that becomes a dangerous poison for the body of our civil societies.” For people on Death Row, this is not an abstraction but part of their daily existence.
In addition, Lee Kovarsky writes about the peculiar status of Death Row:
Pre-execution confinement is a form of nonpunitive custody. The execution is the penalty, and the prior confinement is the administrative detention necessary to carry that punishment out. After all, if death is the ultimate penalty, then what could the moral justification for adding punitive detention be? None of this is to say that pre-execution confinement is morally or legally unjustifiable. But if the confinement is nonpunitive, then it ought to be subject to moral and constitutional constraints that differ from those that limit punishment. — 2023 Virginia Law Review
Some related reading:
Living on Death Row: The Psychology of Waiting to Die, H. Toch, J. R. Acker, and V. M. Bonventre (Editors). American Psychological Association, 2018.
“Death Row Phenomenon. A Fate Worse Than Death” Torture on death row from a psychological and legal perspective.” Olga Hempel. University of Vienna, 2015.
Relevant pieces from Cantor Mike Zoosman of L’Chaim: Jews Against the Death Penalty:
Dog Attacks
Another category not addressed here is dog attacks: reports from the Commonwealth of Virginia and Interfaith Action for Human Rights’ efforts around this tortuous treatment.
Rewriting Torture summary
[This material is also available as a single PDF sheet for those who prefer one visual representation. Table here is jpg; see full article, “Rewriting Torture: Manufacturing a Primer of Abuse in US Domestic Prisons,” p.52-53 for table format.]
from “Rewriting Torture: Manufacturing a Primer of Abuse in US Domestic Prisons.” Susan A. Phillips. Social Justice, 2016, Vol. 43, No. 4 (146) (2016), pp. 44-68. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26380313
A 2009 “Prison: Theory, Ethnography, and Action” class compared reports of torture conducted at Abu Ghraib with similar experiences in US domestic prisons. Susan A. Phillips, professor of Environmental Analysis at Pitzer College (then associate professor), published the results. Phillips summarizes: “[The project] shifted expertise from academics to incarcerated or formerly incarcerated individuals….In the outcome, the altered report turned out to be a rigorous, well-documented primer of ill treatment, structural problems, and troubling legal and extralegal practices within US prisons” (p.50).
In 2007, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) detailed concerns about maltreatment of individuals then in CIA custody. That report, leaked to journalist Mark Danner, appeared in The New York Review of Books, April 9, 2009 as “ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen ‘High Value Detainees’ in CIA Custody by the International Committee of the Red Cross.” Original ICRC report is in left-hand column.
All of the information contained in the students’ report (right-hand column) is based on documented occurrences and first-person narratives of prison life in the United States.
Comparison table appears in “Rewriting Torture: Manufacturing a Primer of Abuse in US Domestic Prisons,” p.52-53. Full article is available from public libraries through JSTOR.
This report was intended as an accounting of some of the abuses taking place on US domestic territory. Whether these comprise torture is only part of the point. We assert, just as the ICRC might, that our system needs remedy. We seek that remedy with you, the reader.
— “Rewriting Torture: Manufacturing a Primer of Abuse in US Domestic Prisons,” p.64
This summary prepared by V. Spatz, May 2025, for “Everyday Torture” on Rereading4Liberation.com
Alt Text: comparison of ICRC report and students’ altered report shows some matching categories, i.e., “arrest and transfer” in both columns. And some that differ, e.g., “continuous solitary confinement and incommunicado detention” vs. “continuous solitary confinement” and “suffocation by water” vs “use of non-lethal weapons” and “beatings by use of a collar” vs “exposure to disease”
Rereading Torah Towards Liberation 