(This is an archived extract from the book Patterns of Power: Edition 2)
It is illegitimate for a State to use more than the minimum necessary violence when it is enforcing the law. There are three all-too-common law-enforcement scenarios which can be classified as abusive:
· Although physical coercion may be required to make an arrest, it is unacceptable to assault or injure a suspect.
· Sometimes a very unpleasant relationship can develop between prisoners and their guards, in what Philip Zimbardo referred to as “The Lucifer Effect”.[1] This can include torture, as described in the previous section (7.2.4.1).
· The use of lethal force in crowd control, particularly against peaceful protests, is an abuse of power.
Often State violence merely strengthens people's determination to resist.
If States use violence against the person “as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population”, it is committing “crimes against humanity” as listed in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.[2]
© PatternsofPower.org, 2014
[1] Some of the key findings from Philip Zimbardo's book, The Lucifer Effect, are recorded on his website at http://www.lucifereffect.com/, which was available in May 2014. Other related material can be found by referring to the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority (hyperlinks are for Wikipedia entries, available in May 2014).
[2] Article 7 of the Rome Statute defines eleven “Crimes against humanity”, which include torture and ethnic cleansing among other forms of violence against the person. The full text of the Statute was available in May 2014 at http://www.icrc.org/IHL.nsf/52d68d14de6160e0c12563da005fdb1b/fb2c5995d7cbf846412566900039e535.