Have you ever faced custody and pre-trial detention? It's hard to imagine until you've gone through this. But yes, offering a definitely innocent person that was abused by the System the choice between two forms of punishment is some form of "torture".
Being manipulated by the cops into a fake testimony is torture. Having the cops fake evidence and their testimonies to harass you is torture. Remaining days in a room with lights on all day, shit all over the walls in a freezing cold or hammering hot, without access to a shower or better clothes, that's torture.
And that's when you're lucky. The less lucky ones have months or years of pre-trial detention, sometimes in isolation (which is a well-studied form of torture) before they can even defend themselves.
Pre-trail detention isn't torture. If it were, it would be forbidden in many jurisdictions. Hard isolation is different; at the very least, it is a step in the direction of torture.
>But we don't do that. We don't know for sure that someone is innocent.
A basic principle of any civilised society is "innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt". I will not waste time explaining why this is important.
I am not presupposing guilt, I am seriously wondering how you would have a working justice system that never arrests suspects.
Complaining that all elements of a justice system is a form of torture is like unironically using the term "stare rape": you're trivialising the real term in pursuit of winning points in an argument.
Define torture if you are so inclined. Regardless, the plea bargain system has been repeatedly abused to compel false testimoney from people otherwise helpless to defend themselves from a lengthy and costly legal proceeding that will leave them ruined. Its a violation of their human rights, its prohibited by the constitution, and empirically has ruined millions of people. Crimes that do not involve violence against another person or person or their property (which are logically synonymous) should not be crimes, that would lower the judicial load.
I agree with everything you said, and still disagree that Golding suspects until an appearance in court is the same as waterboarding them or pulling their fingernails.
Just because I pointed out that such a practice is not, in fact, any form of torture does not mean that the practice is not unduly burdensome and unfair.
I appreciate that view, but thats not a qualitative analysis of torture. Im not sure that it could be appropriately defined in a way that distinguishes torture from other types of violence, so maybe the word is really only useful in creating an emotional effect.
> The American legal system found a less expensive alternative. Like its medieval predecessor, it substituted confession for trial. The medieval confession was motivated by the threat of torture. The modern version, a plea bargain, is motivated by the threat of a much more severe sentence if the defendant insists on a trial and is convicted.
The core assertion that offering a lesser punishment in exchange for cooperation is a form of “torture” strikes me as an extreme exaggeration.