Torturing Environments explores how contemporary practices of coercion have evolved beyond traditional physical torture, increasingly relying on psychological pressure, structural violence, and the manipulation of social and economic conditions. This book further develops the groundbreaking concept of "Torturing Environments," offering a new lens to understand how states and institutions can generate suffering intentionally without overt physical brutality.
Drawing from forensic, clinical, legal, and human rights perspectives, Torturing Environments provides an in-depth analysis of the mechanisms that produce sustained psychological harm, including detention conditions, harassment, fabricated criminalization, intimidation of families, and deliberate economic deprivation. It presents the Torturing Environment Scale (TES 2.0), an updated tool for the measurement of coercive environments, and introduces eighteen practical Quick Reference Cards to guide documentation and assessment in fieldwork, forensic reporting, and litigation. Each card offers clear, hands-on guidance for assessing specific conditions within Torturing Environments—covering topics such as security planning, trauma-informed interviewing, documenting solitary confinement, coercive interrogation, threats or attacks on identity and dignity, among others.
Written for lawyers, human rights practitioners, mental health professionals, forensic experts, scholars, students, and engaged readers, Torturing Environments delivers an essential and accessible framework for identifying, analyzing, and confronting emerging forms of ill-treatment and torture. It is a vital contribution for those committed to protecting human dignity in complex contemporary settings.
Torturing environments: Review of the concept and applications
List of Tables
About the author: Pau Pérez-Sales
Why this book?
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Understanding Torture and Torturing Environments
1. Definition of Torture: a quick reminder
The legal definition and its complexities
2. Torturing Environments: A New Conceptual Framework
Elements of the legal definition of Torture and Torturing Environments
Is suffering a necessary element of a Torturing Environment?
What about Intentionality and Purpose?
Acting in official capacity. State Responsibility in Torturing Environments
Torturing environments do not need to be physical. There can be mental jails
Any element of everyday life can be part of a Torturing Environment
But then: are torturing environments the same or equivalent to torture?
3. Unpacking torturous environments
Physical Survival
Sense of security: Fear
The importance of Control: Powerlessness, uncertainty and uncontrollability
Identity, Dignity and attacks on the self
Defining identity
Shattering core beliefs
Dignity and moral harm: humiliation, guilt and shame
4. Torturing Environments as applied to collective subjects
Beyond the Individual: Coercion, Identity, and the Targeting of Communities
Does a torturing environment for groups or communities imply a crime of torture?
Components of a torturing environment as applied to groups or communities
The case of the Zapatista communities in Chiapas
Chapter 2
Torturing or Torturous Environments: Contexts of Application.
Police stations and other Short-Term detention centres.
Incommunicado detention and torture in Spain.
Prison as a Torturing Environment
Evin Prison. Documentary analysis
Macarena Rodriguez - Network of Independent Forensic Experts of Mexico
Conditions in confinement
Julian Assange: Life conditions in the Embassy of Ecuador.
Torturing environments in the context of migration
Mexico and migrant detention centres as torturous environments
Greece. The camp of Moria on the island of Lesvos. Architecture of torture in Europe.
Spain's African border: the impacts of reception
The concept of Torturing Environment applied to groups or communities. Rama and Creole Peoples in defence of their collective rights.
Can poverty be a form of CIDT or torture?
The slum of Cañada Real Galiana: a history of resistance
Threats and Harassment of Human Rights Defenders.
Collective José Alvear Restrepo (CAJAR) versus Colombia.
Chapter 3
Legal precedents supporting the notion of Torturing Environments
Special Rapporteur on Torture.
Factors determining whether an "environment" is considered a cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in Regional and International human rights bodies
Regional and international human rights tribunals
Can Torturing Environments exist without an intentional element?
On the so-called "cumulative effects” and the duration of the conditions amounting to ill-treatment or torture.
On the determination of suffering
On the progressive incorporation of a community or group perspective in the assessment of cases by Courts
On the concept of "coercive environment" in international law.
Coercive environments versus Torturing Environments
Case studies
Enforced disappearance.
Ill-treatment in institutions for persons with disabilities
Human Rights violations against ethnic groups.
Actions on indigenous peoples
Chapter 4
Learnings and discussions on defining and measuring torturous environments
The Torturing Environments Scale: focus on persons or institutions.
Measuring Torturing Environments. TES and TES 2.0.
Adapting the TES to local conditions
Validation studies
Testing and discussing the TES
Where to put the eye: the difficulties inherent to the analysis of torturing environments and ideas to sort them.
Some guidance on the objective-subjective dilemma
Inter-rater reliability.
Score and overall rating.
Chapter 5. The Torturing Environment Scale.
The updated version of the Torturing Environment Scale (TES 2.0)
Scoring and interpretation of results
Steps to score the TES
The Torturing Environment Scale – Community version (TES C -)
Chapter 6
Assessment of particular conditions within a Torturing Environment – Quick Reference Cards.
Quick Reference Card 0. A summary of a summary
Quick Reference Card 1. Roadmap of a Torturing Environment Study
Quick Reference Card 2. Security of Survivors and Witnesses.
1. Risk Assessment. Elements to consider.
2. Security Plan for a Threatened Person in Prison
3. Security plan for threats in non-detention settings
4. Psychological support of a person under threat.
Quick Reference Card 3. Securing data
Quick Reference Card 4 – Ethical Standards of Interviewing
Quick Reference Card 5. Conducting a Trauma-Informed Interview on Sensitive Matters.
Quick Reference Card 6. First Evidence Interview Model
Quick Reference Card 7. Dealing with Critical Emotions
Quick Reference Card 8. Checklist of Legal safeguards before and during detention
Quick Reference Card 9. Minimum Standards of Detention when Assessing Torturing Environments
Quick Reference Card 10. Checklist of Elements to Explore Related to Psychological Torture in a Monitoring Visit to a Short-Term or Long-Term Detention Facility.
Quick Reference Card 11. Documenting Solitary Confinement
Quick Reference Card 12. Documenting Sleep Deprivation
Quick Reference Card 13. Documenting Threats and Fear producing conditions
Quick Reference Card 14. Documenting actions Targeting the Sense of Control
Quick Reference Card 15. Documenting Actions Targeting Identity, Dignity and Attacks on the Self.
Quick Reference Card 16. Gathering Information on Gender and Sexual Related Violence
Quick reference Card 17. Assessing Coercive Interrogation as part of a Torturing Environment
Quick Reference Card 18. Consistency Analysis.
Quick reference Card 19. Checklist of Main Community Impacts.
Chapter 7
Concluding Remarks
Annex 1. Comparison between TES 1.0 and TES2.0
References
Legal references
Index
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