Story of Cruel & Unusual, The

Colin Dayan. The Story of Cruel & Unusual
Hardcover: 92pp. A Boston Review Book 2007.

Those who condemn the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have blamed U.S. military procedures and abuses of executive powers. But in The Story of Cruel and Unusual, Colin Dayan argues that anyone who has followed the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions regarding the Eighth Amendment would recognize the White House's policies on torture as natural extensions of the language of our courts and practices in U.S. prisons.
Dayan traces the idea of "acceptable" prisoner abuse to the slave codes of the 19th century, which embedded the dehumanization of the incarcerated deeply in our legal system. Although the Eighth Amendment was interpreted generously during the late 1960s and 1970s, over the last 30 years, Supreme Court decisions have once again diminished crucial protections. Prisoners' actual suffering has been deemed less important than the intentions of those inflicting it.
The Story of Cruel and Unusual not only exposes why we tolerate a brutal penal system unique among democracies; it also returns us to necessary truths about human dignity. - book cover