Extrajudicial punishment
Encyclopedia
Extrajudicial punishment is punishment
by the state or some other official authority without the permission of a court
or legal authority. The existence of extrajudicial punishment is considered proof that some governments will break their own legal code
if deemed necessary.
regimes, but even self-proclaimed or internationally recognized democracies have been known to use extrajudicial punishment under certain circumstances.
Although the legal use of capital punishment
is generally decreasing around the world, individuals or groups deemed threatening—or even simply "undesirable"—to a government may nevertheless be targeted for punishment by a regime or its representatives. Such actions typically happen quickly, with security forces acting on a covert basis, performed in such a way as to avoid a massive public outcry and/or international criticism that would reflect badly on the state. Sometimes, the killers are agents outside the government. Criminal organizations, such as La Cosa Nostra, have reportedly been employed for such a purpose.
Another possibility is for uniformed security forces to punish a victim, but under circumstances that make it appear as self-defense
or suicide. The former can be accomplished by planting recently-fired weapons near the body, the latter by fabricating evidence suggesting suicide. In such cases, it can be difficult to prove that the perpetrators acted wrongly. Because of the dangers inherent in armed confrontation, even police or soldiers who might strongly prefer to take an enemy alive may still kill to protect themselves or civilians, and potentially cross the line into extrajudicial murder. Only in the most obvious cases, such as the Operation Flavius
triple killing or the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes
, will the authorities admit that "kill or capture" was replaced with "shoot on sight".
A "disappearance"
occurs where someone who is believed to have been targeted for extrajudicial execution does not reappear alive. Their ultimate fate is thereafter unknown or never fully confirmed.
Extrajudicial punishment may be planned and carried out by a particular branch of a state, without informing other branches, or even without having been ordered to commit such acts. Other branches sometimes tacitly approve of the punishment after the fact. They can also genuinely disagree with it, depending on the circumstances, especially when complex intragovernment or internal policy struggles also exist within a state's policymaking apparatus.
In times of war
, natural disaster
, societal collapse
, or in the absence of an established system of criminal justice
, there may be increased incidences of extrajudicial punishment. In such circumstances, police or military personnel may be unofficially authorised to punish severely individuals involved in rioting, looting
or other violent acts, especially if caught in flagrante delicto
. This position is sometimes itself corrupted, resulting in the death of merely inconvenient persons, that is, relative innocents who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
and Special Council of the NKVD
are examples from the history of the Soviet Union
, where extrajudicial punishment "by administrative means
" was part of the state policy. Other Soviet Bloc secret police
organizations like the East German Stasi
, Romania
n Securitate
and Polish
ZOMO
have also used it from time to time.
Most Latin America
n dictatorship
s have regularly instituted extrajudicial killings of their enemies; for one of the better-known examples, see Operation Condor
.
Some consider the killing of Black Panther
Fred Hampton
to have been an extrajudicial killing ordered by the United States government. Also, the US has been accused of exercising a covert prison system set up by the CIA in several countries, especially Egypt
, to evade US jurisdiction
.
The deaths of the leaders of the leftist urban guerilla group, the Red Army Faction
, Ulrike Meinhof
, Andreas Baader
, Gudrun Ensslin
and Jan-Carl Raspe
in West Germany
are regarded as extrajudicial killings by some of those in the German radical left
movements, a theory partly based on the testimony of Irmgard Möller
.
During the apartheid years South Africa's
security forces were also accused of using extrajudicial means to deal with their political opponents. After his release, Nelson Mandela
would refer to these acts as proof of a Third Force
. This was denied vehemently by the administration of F.W. de Klerk. Later the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
would find that both military and police agencies such as the Civil Cooperation Bureau
and C10
based at Vlakplaas
were guilty of gross human rights violations. This led the International Criminal Court
to declare apartheid a crime against humanity
.
a system of administrative detentions called Re-education through labor (láodòng jiàoyǎng 劳动教养, abbreviated láojiào 劳教) is used to detain persons for minor crimes such as petty theft
, prostitution
, and trafficking illegal drugs, as well as crimes against the state such as leading unregistered Chinese house church
es, for periods of up to four years. In 2001, at least 5,000 Falun Gong
adherents were thought to be detained in re-education camps. Re-education through labor sentences are given by police, rather than through the judicial system.
For many years, the Jamaican Constabulary Force has been noted for its extrajudicial killings. With 140 police killings in a population of 3 million, "Jamaica’s police force [is] among the deadliest in the world".
It has been discussed that the use of psychiatric treatments to reduce unwanted behaviors can be seen to be extrajudical punishments, due to many side-effects associated to these treatments.
organisations like Amnesty International
are campaigning against extrajudicial punishment.
Punishment
Punishment is the authoritative imposition of something negative or unpleasant on a person or animal in response to behavior deemed wrong by an individual or group....
by the state or some other official authority without the permission of a court
Court
A court is a form of tribunal, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance with the rule of law...
or legal authority. The existence of extrajudicial punishment is considered proof that some governments will break their own legal code
Legal code
A legal code is a body of law written by a governmental body, such as a U.S. state, a Canadian Province or German Bundesland or a municipality...
if deemed necessary.
Nature
Extrajudicial punishment is often a feature of politically repressivePolitical repression
Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take political life of society....
regimes, but even self-proclaimed or internationally recognized democracies have been known to use extrajudicial punishment under certain circumstances.
Although the legal use of capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
is generally decreasing around the world, individuals or groups deemed threatening—or even simply "undesirable"—to a government may nevertheless be targeted for punishment by a regime or its representatives. Such actions typically happen quickly, with security forces acting on a covert basis, performed in such a way as to avoid a massive public outcry and/or international criticism that would reflect badly on the state. Sometimes, the killers are agents outside the government. Criminal organizations, such as La Cosa Nostra, have reportedly been employed for such a purpose.
Another possibility is for uniformed security forces to punish a victim, but under circumstances that make it appear as self-defense
Self-defense
Self-defense, self-defence or private defense is a countermeasure that involves defending oneself, one's property or the well-being of another from physical harm. The use of the right of self-defense as a legal justification for the use of force in times of danger is available in many...
or suicide. The former can be accomplished by planting recently-fired weapons near the body, the latter by fabricating evidence suggesting suicide. In such cases, it can be difficult to prove that the perpetrators acted wrongly. Because of the dangers inherent in armed confrontation, even police or soldiers who might strongly prefer to take an enemy alive may still kill to protect themselves or civilians, and potentially cross the line into extrajudicial murder. Only in the most obvious cases, such as the Operation Flavius
Operation Flavius
Operation Flavius was the name given to an operation by a Special Air Service team in Gibraltar on 6 March 1988 tasked to prevent a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb attack...
triple killing or the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes
Jean Charles de Menezes
Jean Charles de Menezes was a Brazilian man shot in the head seven times at Stockwell tube station on the London Underground by the London Metropolitan police, after he was misidentified as one of the fugitives involved in the previous day's failed bombing attempts...
, will the authorities admit that "kill or capture" was replaced with "shoot on sight".
A "disappearance"
Forced disappearance
In international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the...
occurs where someone who is believed to have been targeted for extrajudicial execution does not reappear alive. Their ultimate fate is thereafter unknown or never fully confirmed.
Extrajudicial punishment may be planned and carried out by a particular branch of a state, without informing other branches, or even without having been ordered to commit such acts. Other branches sometimes tacitly approve of the punishment after the fact. They can also genuinely disagree with it, depending on the circumstances, especially when complex intragovernment or internal policy struggles also exist within a state's policymaking apparatus.
In times of war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
, natural disaster
Natural disaster
A natural disaster is the effect of a natural hazard . It leads to financial, environmental or human losses...
, societal collapse
Societal collapse
Societal collapse broadly includes both quite abrupt societal failures typified by collapses , as well as more extended gradual declines of superpowers...
, or in the absence of an established system of criminal justice
Criminal justice
Criminal Justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts...
, there may be increased incidences of extrajudicial punishment. In such circumstances, police or military personnel may be unofficially authorised to punish severely individuals involved in rioting, looting
Looting
Looting —also referred to as sacking, plundering, despoiling, despoliation, and pillaging—is the indiscriminate taking of goods by force as part of a military or political victory, or during a catastrophe, such as during war, natural disaster, or rioting...
or other violent acts, especially if caught in flagrante delicto
In flagrante delicto
In flagrante delicto or sometimes simply in flagrante is a legal term used to indicate that a criminal has been caught in the act of committing an offence...
. This position is sometimes itself corrupted, resulting in the death of merely inconvenient persons, that is, relative innocents who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Previously
The NKVD troikaNKVD troika
NKVD troika or Troika, in Soviet Union history, were commissions of three persons who convicted people without trial. These commissions were employed as an instrument of extrajudicial punishment introduced to circumvent the legal system with a means for quick execution or imprisonment...
and Special Council of the NKVD
Special Council of the NKVD
Special Council of the USSR NKVD was created by the same decree of Sovnarkom of July 10, 1934 that introduced the NKVD itself. By the decree, the Special Council was endowed with the rights to apply punishments "by administrative means," i.e., without trial...
are examples from the history of the Soviet Union
History of the Soviet Union
The history of the Soviet Union has roots in the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, emerged as the main political force in the capital of the former Russian Empire, though they had to fight a long and brutal civil war against the Mensheviks, or Whites...
, where extrajudicial punishment "by administrative means
By administrative means
By administrative means was an expression in use in the Soviet Union applied to the cases when some actions that normally required a court decision were left to the decision of executive bodies .With respect to the imprisonment and deportation of individuals this meant extrajudicial punishment.See...
" was part of the state policy. Other Soviet Bloc secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
organizations like the East German Stasi
Stasi
The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (abbreviation , literally State Security), was the official state security service of East Germany. The MfS was headquartered...
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
and Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
ZOMO
ZOMO
Zmotoryzowane Odwody Milicji Obywatelskiej , were paramilitary-police formations during the Communist Era, in the People's Republic of Poland...
have also used it from time to time.
Most Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
n dictatorship
Dictatorship
A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...
s have regularly instituted extrajudicial killings of their enemies; for one of the better-known examples, see Operation Condor
Operation Condor
Operation Condor , was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America...
.
Some consider the killing of Black Panther
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
Fred Hampton
Fred Hampton
Fred Hampton was an African-American activist and deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party...
to have been an extrajudicial killing ordered by the United States government. Also, the US has been accused of exercising a covert prison system set up by the CIA in several countries, especially Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, to evade US jurisdiction
Jurisdiction
Jurisdiction is the practical authority granted to a formally constituted legal body or to a political leader to deal with and make pronouncements on legal matters and, by implication, to administer justice within a defined area of responsibility...
.
The deaths of the leaders of the leftist urban guerilla group, the Red Army Faction
Red Army Faction
The radicalized were, like many in the New Left, influenced by:* Sociological developments, pressure within the educational system in and outside Europe and the U.S...
, Ulrike Meinhof
Ulrike Meinhof
Ulrike Marie Meinhof was a German left-wing militant. She co-founded the Red Army Faction in 1970 after having previously worked as a journalist for the monthly left-wing magazine Konkret. She was arrested in 1972, and eventually charged with numerous murders and the formation of a criminal...
, Andreas Baader
Andreas Baader
Andreas Bernd Baader was one of the first leaders of the German left-wing militant organization Red Army Faction, also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang.- Life :...
, Gudrun Ensslin
Gudrun Ensslin
Gudrun Ensslin was a founder of the German militant group Red Army Faction . After becoming involved with co-founder Andreas Baader, Ensslin was influential in the politicization of Baader's voluntaristic anarchistic beliefs. Ensslin was perhaps the intellectual head of the RAF...
and Jan-Carl Raspe
Jan-Carl Raspe
Jan-Carl Raspe was a member of the German militant group, the Red Army Faction.- Young life :Raspe was born in Seefeld in Tirol. He was described as gentle but had difficulty communicating with other people. His father had said that he couldn't stand violence...
in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
are regarded as extrajudicial killings by some of those in the German radical left
Radical left
Radical left is a term used in the names of several political movements:* Det Radikale Venstre, a social-liberal party in Denmark* Radical Party of the Left , a social-liberal party in France...
movements, a theory partly based on the testimony of Irmgard Möller
Irmgard Möller
Irmgard Möller is a German militant and a former member of the Red Army Faction...
.
During the apartheid years South Africa's
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
security forces were also accused of using extrajudicial means to deal with their political opponents. After his release, Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
would refer to these acts as proof of a Third Force
Third Force (South Africa)
The "Third Force" was a term used by leaders of the ANC during the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to an unknown group believed to be responsible for a surge in violence in KwaZulu-Natal, and townships around and south of the Witwatersrand ....
. This was denied vehemently by the administration of F.W. de Klerk. Later the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu is a South African activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid...
would find that both military and police agencies such as the Civil Cooperation Bureau
Civil Cooperation Bureau
The South African Civil Cooperation Bureau was a government-sponsored hit squad during the apartheid era that operated under the authority of Defence Minister General Magnus Malan...
and C10
Vlakplaas
Vlakplaas is a farm 20km west of Pretoria that served as the headquarters of the South African Police counterinsurgency unit C10 working for the apartheid government in South Africa...
based at Vlakplaas
Vlakplaas
Vlakplaas is a farm 20km west of Pretoria that served as the headquarters of the South African Police counterinsurgency unit C10 working for the apartheid government in South Africa...
were guilty of gross human rights violations. This led the International Criminal Court
International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court is a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression .It came into being on 1 July 2002—the date its founding treaty, the Rome Statute of the...
to declare apartheid a crime against humanity
Crime against humanity
Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings...
.
Currently
In the People's Republic of ChinaPeople's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
a system of administrative detentions called Re-education through labor (láodòng jiàoyǎng 劳动教养, abbreviated láojiào 劳教) is used to detain persons for minor crimes such as petty theft
Theft
In common usage, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting and fraud...
, prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, and trafficking illegal drugs, as well as crimes against the state such as leading unregistered Chinese house church
Chinese house church
Chinese house churches are a religious movement of unregistered assemblies of Christians in the People's Republic of China, which operate independently of the government-run Three-Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council for Protestant groups and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic...
es, for periods of up to four years. In 2001, at least 5,000 Falun Gong
Falun Gong
Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline first introduced in China in 1992 by its founder, Li Hongzhi, through public lectures. It combines the practice of meditation and slow-moving qigong exercises with the moral philosophy...
adherents were thought to be detained in re-education camps. Re-education through labor sentences are given by police, rather than through the judicial system.
For many years, the Jamaican Constabulary Force has been noted for its extrajudicial killings. With 140 police killings in a population of 3 million, "Jamaica’s police force [is] among the deadliest in the world".
It has been discussed that the use of psychiatric treatments to reduce unwanted behaviors can be seen to be extrajudical punishments, due to many side-effects associated to these treatments.
Human rights groups
Many human rightsHuman rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
organisations like Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
are campaigning against extrajudicial punishment.
Data on human rights violation and state repression
There are currently a wide variety of databases available which attempt to measure, in a rigorous fashion exactly what governments do against those within their territorial jurisdiction. The list below was created and maintained by Prof. Christian Davenport at the University of Maryland. These efforts vary with regard to the particular form of human rights violation they are concerned with, the source employed for the data collection as well as the spatial and temporal domain of interest.Global coverage
- "CIRI Human Rights Data Project, 1981-2006". by Profs David Cingranelli and David Richards
- "Freedom in the World, 1976-2006" by Freedom House
- "Genocide & Politicide, 1955-2005" by Prof. Barbara Harff and the Political Instability Task Force
- "Political Terror Scale, 1976-2006 by Prof. Mark Gibney
- "Worldwide Atrocities Dataset, 1995-2007 by the Political Instability Task Force/KEDS
- "World Freedom Atlas, 1990-2006" - Mapping Program by Prof. Zachary Forest Johnson
Regional coverage
- "European Protest and Coercion, 1980-1995" by Prof. Ron Francisco
Selective coverage of state repression
- "The Kansas Event Data System (KEDS)" by Profs. Deborah “Misty” Gerner and Phill Schrodt
- "Intranational Political Interactions Project, 1979-1992" by Profs. David Davis and Will Moore
- "Minorities at Risk, 1945-2006" by the Center for International Development and Conflict Management
Country coverage of state repression
- "Guatemala, 1960-1996" by the International Center for Human Rights Research
- "Kosovo, 1999" by the Human Rights Data Analysis Group - Benetech
- "Rwanda, 1994" by Profs. Christian Davenport and Allan Stam - The Genodynamics Project
- "Sierra Leone, 1991-2000" by the Human Rights Data Analysis Group - Benetech
- "Timor-Leste, 1974-1999" by the Human Rights Data Analysis Group - Benetech
- "United States vs. the Black Panthers, 1967-1973" by Prof. Christian Davenport - "Rashomon and Repression"
- "United States vs. the Republic of New Africa, 1968-1974 by Prof. Christian Davenport - "Out on the Inside"
See also
- Extrajudicial detentionExtrajudicial detentionArbitrary or extrajudicial detention is the detention of individuals by a state, without ever laying formal charges against them.Although it has a long history of legitimate use in wartime , detention without charge, sometimes in secret, has been one of the hallmarks of totalitarian states...
- Extrajudicial killing
- Arbitrary arrest and detentionArbitrary arrest and detentionArbitrary arrest and arbitrary detention are the arrest or detention of an individual in a case in which there is no likelihood or evidence that they committed a crime against legal statute, or in which there has been no proper due process of law...
- AssassinationAssassinationTo carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
- Targeted killingTargeted killingTargeted killing is the deliberate, specific targeting and killing, by a government or its agents, of a supposed terrorist or of a supposed "unlawful combatant" who is not in that government's custody...
- Death squadDeath squadA death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
- Extraordinary renditionExtraordinary renditionExtraordinary rendition is the abduction and illegal transfer of a person from one nation to another. "Torture by proxy" is used by some critics to describe situations in which the United States and the United Kingdom have transferred suspected terrorists to other countries in order to torture the...
- LynchingLynchingLynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
- OutlawOutlawIn historical legal systems, an outlaw is declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, this takes the burden of active prosecution of a criminal from the authorities. Instead, the criminal is withdrawn all legal protection, so that anyone is legally empowered to persecute...
- Human rightsHuman rightsHuman rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
- Summary executionSummary executionA summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is killed on the spot without trial or after a show trial. Summary executions have been practiced by the police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are associated with guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, terrorism, and...
- State of emergencyState of emergencyA state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend some normal functions of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, alert citizens to change their normal behaviours, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans. It can also be used as a rationale...
- Martial lawMartial lawMartial law is the imposition of military rule by military authorities over designated regions on an emergency basis— only temporary—when the civilian government or civilian authorities fail to function effectively , when there are extensive riots and protests, or when the disobedience of the law...
- PossePosse comitatus (common law)Posse comitatus or sheriff's posse is the common-law or statute law authority of a county sheriff or other law officer to conscript any able-bodied males to assist him in keeping the peace or to pursue and arrest a felon, similar to the concept of the "hue and cry"...
- Prison rapePrison rapePrison rape commonly refers to the rape of inmates in prison by other inmates or prison staff.In 2001, Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 140,000 inmates had been raped while incarcerated. and there is a significant variation in the rates of prison rape by race...
- Summary justiceSummary justiceSummary justice refers to the trial and punishment of suspected offenders without recourse to a more formal and protracted trial under the legal system...
- TerrorismTerrorismTerrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
- TortureTortureTorture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
- VigilanteVigilanteA vigilante is a private individual who legally or illegally punishes an alleged lawbreaker, or participates in a group which metes out extralegal punishment to an alleged lawbreaker....
Monitoring organizations
- Ansar Burney Trust (Pakistan and the Middle East)
- Human Rights WatchHuman Rights WatchHuman Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...