Prisoner abuse

The endless playing of random static (similar to that of unused TV frequencies) with no pattern; this can cause extreme discomfort and disorientation.

Prisoners may be subject to taunting, heckling, profanity, and malicious lies by prison authorities. Guards and other authorities may use verbal abuse as a means of frightening or demoralizing prisoners to make them more compliant, or simply out of sadism.

Prisoners are sometimes intentionally housed with inmates known to have raped other prisoners, or protection from known rapists may be purposely withheld from the prisoners. These practices create a very high incidence of rape in US prisons, which was the topic of the 2001 report No Escape from Human Rights Watch.[2][3]

The experience of forced strip searches can be experienced as a traumatic event similarly to that of rape especially by female prisoners, especially when combined with habitual body cavity searches. The prevalence of CCTV in modern correctional facilities and the generally indiscreet nature of strip searches, often with a number of prison guards observing, usually adds to the experienced humiliation. Strip searches are often arbitrarily used under various pretences, when the actual ambition is to assert control and predominance as well as to intimidate the subjected prison inmates.[4]

Forced enemas are commonly acknowledged as being uncomfortable and also degrading for the receiving person, especially when practiced in a prison environment designated by a stark imbalance in power. Such a treatment can also be registered as a form of physical abuse as well as sexual abuse, when practiced without consent or forcibly carried out against the will of the subjected prisoner. Physically invasive measures of this kind are often purposefully taken in order to demonstrate predominance and to assert "total control" over an incarcerated individual. By the application of a forced enema in a situation of incarceration one of the last remaining spheres of privacy as well as personal autonomy is stripped away from the prison inmate. As the prisoner's generally autonomous instances of bowel movement are hereby unnaturally taken out of his or her own decision-making and forcibly placed under the arbitration of prison authorities, "total control" over the inmate is implemented in a near finalizing manner. Therefore such a procedure can lead to experiences of emotional distress and psychological trauma for the defenceless detainee, which is typically desired by the authorities to undermine the prisoner's mental resilience.
As a physical consequence of this practice, anal fissures, chronic hemorrhoids and rectal prolapse can occur when administered excessively and without medical care. Forced enemas have evidentially been used for example at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp by the United States. In certain cases it was administered under the pretence to counter a prisoner's dehydration. Forms of medical justification were employed whenever enemas were in fact used as a coercive tool. Despite the pretext of medical need, it was later admitted in certain cases, that this was in fact untrue. The CIA administered enemas to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Mohammed al-Qahtani among others.[5][6]

"Enhanced interrogation" is a euphemism for U.S. torture methods implemented in the War on Terror purportedly needed to extract information from detainees. Examples include use of stress positions, sleep deprivation, starvation, thirst, and sexual humiliation.[7]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the overcrowded Jaw prison of Bahrain witnessed a major COVID-19 outbreak. Several prisoners were confirmed to be infected with the virus, while the authorities failed to facilitate them with proper preventive medical supplies, including face masks or hand sanitizers, and conducting regular screening tests. The authorities fell short of ensuring prisoners’ rights to health and following the rules of treating prisoners. One of the main concerns had been the extensive population of the prison, which made social distancing impossible.[9] On 9 June 2021, an inmate of Jaw prison, Husain Barakat, died due to COVID-19 complications.[10] Even after the pandemic, Bahrain’s Jaw prison remained controversial, where prisoners’ rights of health continued to be violated. In June 2022, Amnesty International reported that Bahraini authorities failed to respond to the inmates suffering with tuberculosis. Prison authorities constantly disregarded the prisoners with symptoms and didn’t allow them to get tested for the airborne disease. Some of the prisoners were called back to the prison after they were confirmed of being infected in the hospital. One of the prisoners, Ahmed Jaber, was not sent to the hospital until he was semi-paralysed after being sick for 11 months.[11]