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. First off, incase you didn't know, this case involves American soldiers who were apparently doing very horrible things to the Iraqies that were captured after 9/11, and in the recent war with Iraq. I am not going to go into major details as to what these prisoners did, you can look that up yourself, however I would just like to say that many of the actions were utterly retched, and disturbing. The argument has come down to this: What should be done to these American guards who committed these unspeakably humiliating acts? Well, not that these acts are forgiveable, but from a psychological standpoint, you can examine an experiment done in 1971 at Stanford University by Dr. Philip Zimbardo (You can get more info here). In this experiment, Zimbardo 70 applicants apply, and screened each one of them with personality tests to eliminate anyone with pyschological disorders, or with past criminal histories. Anyhow, these subjects were widdled down to 24 males, all of whom were middle class, and intelligent. Then, by the flip of a coin, half were assigned the role of a police guard, and the others were prisoners. To begin the experiment, all the prisoners were arrested at their home for armed robbery and burglary, placed in the back of a police car, taken to the station, finger-printed, and then blind folded to let them ponder what they had done (remember, this is all a simulated environment, however the reality of this often made the volunteers quite emotional). To simulate a prison, Zimbardo consulted a real prison guard and a few experts to "transform" Stanford's psych basement into the perfect prison. The corridor of the basement became what was called "The Yard," the only place where prisoners were allowed to eat, walk, or excercise, except when they went to the bathroom (which they had to be blindfolded as to not know where the exit to the fascility was). The whole "prison" was "bugged" so that all conversations/actions of the guards or prisoners could be recorded easily.
The experiment was ready to take place. The prisoners were brought into the "prison" then, and were greeted by the "warden". To humilate the prisoners, they were stripped naked, and de-loused as to remove all bacteria or germs, all while being blind folded. After this, each prison was issued a prison uniform onto which a number was placed. They were also given a cap, and rubber shoes. Their heads were then shaved. The reason for all of these things was to create humilation...the effect that real prisoners get.
The guards were given NO FORMAL TRAINING, rather, they were allowed to do whatever they saw fit to keep order. AND, the guards were warned of the possible danger of these prisoners. The guards were also dressed in specific uniforms...basically a police outfit with mirrored sunglasses, as to not allow anyhow to see what their emotions were.
The guards would then wake everyone up early each morning to do counts. This allowed them to take control over the prisoners. If one "stepped out of order", they would make them do push-ups, something that seems fair enough, however was in fact used in Nazi prison camps.
After the FIRST day, the prisoners rebelled by putting their cots against the door, and generally being disruptive. The guards as a result used force to stop the rebels. They grabbed a fire extinquisher from the wall and sprayed each of them with icy cold C02, then, sripped them naked. When the leader of the rebellion was found, he was taken into solitary confinement, and verbally harassed.
After the rebellion, guards became extra mis-trustful of the prisoners, believing them to be REAL troublemakers. Thus, the guards were now in the REAL role of a guard, and began to monitor everything that the prisoners did, even going to the bathroom. In fact, after 10:00 PM, prisoners were forced to urinate and defecate into buckets, which when the guards deemed appriate for punishment, did not allow them to empty them. This further added to the degradation of the environment.
After 36 hours, the a prisoner was suffering from severe emotional disturbance, disorganized thinking, and rage--as a result, he wanted release. He was interviewed, and told that in a real prison his situation would be much worse. He was then told he should re-think his decision. When he returned to his cell, he told everyone that "they couldn't escape, they couldn't quit" which truly solidified the idea that this was a real thing. The prisoner then became so emotionally distraught and "crazy" that he had to be removed from the experiment...merely 36 hours into the experiment!
After a visit from family members to the inmates, who were now totally distrought, there was a rumored prison break. To try and foil this, the guards (and Zimbardo by now, totally absorbed in his role as prison manager!) tried many approaches, wasting a whole day of data collection. Frustrated, and eventually finding out that this was all rumored, the guards began harrassing the inmates to punish them, making them strip naked again, scrub the toilet bowls with their bare hands repeatedly, and making them do repeatitve push-ups, jumping jacks, whateve they could think of for counts of several hours.
At this point, the experiment was getting somewhat out of hand. When a catholic priest was called in, and asked the prison mates (who introduced themselves by their numbers) how they were going to get out of that situation, they said, "With the help of a lawyer".
Prisoners started to break down too. Prisoner #819 didn't even want to see the priest, rather he said he was sick, in that he refused to eat, and was suffering obvious emotional distresses. In response to his "complaining" the guards lined all the prisoners up and made them chant "Prisoner #819 is a bad prisoner. Because of what Prisoner #819 did, my cell is a mess, Mr. Correctional Officer" in unison dozens of times. When #819 heard this, he immediately broke down crying, and said that he could never leave the prison because he was "a bad prisoner". As a result, he had to be re-reminded that it was only an experiment, and thus re-joined his inmates again.
As a result of this experiment, everyone single one of the guards and prisoners assumed their roles within 2 days...believing full-heartedly that they had commited a crime, or in the case of the guards that they were serving justive. And because of this, 3 types of guards emerged, the tough, but good guards, the good ones who never punished, and the very tough, almost sadistic guards who thoroughly enjoyed tormenting and humiliating prisoners. In fact, the meanest guard of them all was called "John Wayne" for his horrible skills of torture, and being almost cowboy like in the execution of his tactics.
When a lawyer was called by one of the parents to get their child bailed from the prison (and after he talked to Zimbardo), it became clear to the psychologist that the experiment had to be disbanded...too many people in the prison environment were too solidly convinced in every way shape and form that it was a real prison, being humiliated constantly. Also, in the night shifts, the guards abuse of the prisoners even led to pornographic exploits.
Thus, after only 6 days into a 2 week experiment, the prison had to be disbanded.
CONCLUSION:
This gives you an idea of what a prison environment causes in the human mind. When uniforms of conformity such as guards wearing specific suits, or the prisoners having their heads shaved and wearing smocks are used, and specific procedures are used to differentiate between the two groups, even average people will assume that role. Thus, this really makes you think; what would I have done in a prison situation: if you were a prisoner; If you were a guard? So you can see, people too often proclaim others as being "evil" or "naturally bad natured," however as was shown in this famous experiment, even average people can do things they wouldn't normally do in a normal situation. So, applying what we have learned to the Iragi prisoners, we can easily see how this may have happened. And while there is no excuse for these actions, nor should the punishments be any less, it does give a certain insight into the human psych that would have otherwise been blamed on personal flaws.
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