Prisoner abuse is the mistreatment of persons while they are under arrest or incarcerated. Prisoner abuse can include

physical abuse Physical abuse is any intentional act causing injury or trauma to another person or animal by way of bodily contact. In most cases, children are the victims of physical abuse, but adults can also be victims, as in cases of domestic violence or wo ...

, psychological abuse,

sexual abuse Sexual abuse or sex abuse, also referred to as molestation, is abusive sexual behavior by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using force or by taking advantage of another. Molestation often refers to an instance of sexual assa ...

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. definitions of tortur ...

, or other acts such as refusal of essential medication.

Physical abuse

Physical abuse of prisoners includes illicit beating and hitting of prisoners, unlawful corporal punishment,

stress position A stress position, also known as a submission position, places the human body in such a way that a great amount of weight is placed on just one or two muscles. For example, a subject may be forced to stand on the balls of their feet, then squat ...

s, and excessive or prolonged physical restraining. According to the New York Times, along with physical abuse, prisoners are being thrown into jail for mental illnesses that they obtain and not being treated for them. This causes their issues to get worse and in some cases never get better. Also, relating to physical abuse the mentally ill can be thrown into restrained areas for a long amount of time because of their mental condition, this means that these mentally ill people do not have the resources to get better in the jail. This is also caused by overpopulation in jails. Penal Reform International claims, that overcrowding in the main source of poor jail conditions globally. This caused overcrowding and understaffing: one of the reasons why there can sometimes be 2-3 people in the same jail cell for a long period of time. This causes a lack of privacy and because the jails are so overcrowded some minor cases are cut from the justice system altogether. According to the Marshall Plan, there are also many gangs that are formed in different prisons which cause chaos and force the jail to go through many lockdowns which are a vulnerable time for the prison guards especially when they are understaffed. It also says that the prisoners and the prison guards have to be safe, which caused the guards to be defensive and sometimes abusive.

Psychological abuse

Psychological abuse of prisoners can include

verbal abuse Verbal abuse (also known as verbal aggression, verbal attack, verbal violence, verbal assault, psychic aggression, or psychic violence) is a type of psychological/mental abuse that involves the use of oral, gestured, and written language direct ...

, sleep deprivation,

white noise In signal processing, white noise is a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies, giving it a constant power spectral density. The term is used, with this or similar meanings, in many scientific and technical disciplines ...

, pointless/absurd or

humiliating Humiliation is the abasement of pride, which creates mortification or leads to a state of being humbled or reduced to lowliness or submission. It is an emotion felt by a person whose social status, either by force or willingly, has just decr ...

instructions, recurrent exhaustive inspections and shakedowns, arbitrary

strip search A strip search is a practice of searching a person for weapons or other contraband suspected of being hidden on their body or inside their clothing, and not found by performing a frisk search, but by requiring the person to remove some or al ...

es, and denuding actions. According to Reflexions, prison can alter people's bodily dimensions, their emotional wellbeing, and possibly change their perception for an extended amount of time. It also claims that not only does the prison environment make mental disorders worse, but it also may cause them. The type of prison environment can be cruel and if the prisoner does not have the mental, emotional, and physical willpower they will struggle very greatly.

White noise

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

Verbal abuse

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.

Enablement of sexual violence

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.

Sexual abuse

Sexual abuse is known to occur in facilities for both genders, however it is especially predominant with female prisoners. Common acts can include arbitrary and extensive

es as well as other forms of forced denudation beyond general necessity, excessive vaginal or rectal contraband searches or other internal checks including the oral cavity of a prisoner. In extreme cases even forced insertion of objects into the inmate's vagina or rectum and also forced sexual intercourse is known to occur mostly on female detainees.

Strip searches

The experience of forced

es can be experienced as a traumatic event similarly to that of

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ...

especially by female prisoners, especially when combined with habitual

body cavity search A body cavity search, also known simply as a cavity search, is either a visual search or a manual internal inspection of body cavities for prohibited materials (contraband), such as illegal drugs, money, jewelry, or weapons. Body cavities freque ...

es. The prevalence of CCTV in modern correctional facilities and the generally indiscreet nature of strip searches, often with a number of

prison guard A prison officer or corrections officer is a Uniformed services, uniformed law enforcement official responsible for the custody, supervision, safety, and regulation of prisoners. They are responsible for the care, custody, and control of individ ...

s 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.

Enemas

Forced

enema An enema, also known as a clyster, is an injection of fluid into the lower bowel by way of the rectum.Cullingworth, ''A Manual of Nursing, Medical and Surgical'':155 The word enema can also refer to the liquid injected, as well as to a device ...

s 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

as well as

, 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

hemorrhoid Hemorrhoids (or haemorrhoids), also known as piles, are vascular structures in the anal canal. In their normal state, they are cushions that help with stool control. They become a disease when swollen or inflamed; the unqualified term ''he ...

s and

rectal prolapse A rectal prolapse occurs when walls of the rectum have prolapsed to such a degree that they protrude out of the anus and are visible outside the body. However, most researchers agree that there are 3 to 5 different types of rectal prolapse, depen ...

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 In physiology, dehydration is a lack of total body water, with an accompanying disruption of metabolic processes. It occurs when free water loss exceeds free water intake, usually due to exercise, disease, or high environmental temperature. Mil ...

. 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 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (sometimes also spelled Shaikh; also known by at least 50 pseudonyms; born March 1, 1964 or April 14, 1965) is a Pakistani Islamist militant held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-re ...

Mustafa al-Hawsawi Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi ( ar, مصطفى احمد ادم هوساوي; born August 5, 1968) is a Saudi Arabian citizen. He is alleged to have acted as a key financial facilitator for the September 11 attacks in the United States. Mustafa ...

and

Mohammed al-Qahtani Mohammed Mani Ahmad al-Qahtani ( ar, محمد ماني احمد القحطاني) (sometimes transliterated as al-Kahtani) (born November 19, 1975) is a Saudi citizen who was detained as an al-Qaeda operative for 20 years in the United States ...

among others.

Torture

Torture of prisoners includes any act, whether physical or psychological, which is deliberately done to inflict sensations of pain upon a person under the actor's custody or physical control. This form of prisoner abuse is usually exerted to extract information, but also as means of intimidation, attrition or punishment.

Enhanced interrogation

"Enhanced interrogation" is a euphemism for U.S. torture methods implemented in the

War on Terror The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant ...

purportedly needed to extract information from detainees. Examples include use of

s, sleep deprivation, starvation,

thirst Thirst is the craving for potable fluids, resulting in the basic instinct of animals to drink. It is an essential mechanism involved in fluid balance. It arises from a lack of fluids or an increase in the concentration of certain osmolites, suc ...

, and sexual humiliation.

Collective punishment

After a September 2020 incident inside the Scorpion Prison in the

Tora Prison Tora Prison ( arz, سجن طره '; ) is an Egyptian prison complex for criminal and political detainees, located in Tora, Egypt. The complex is situated in front of the Tora El Balad metro station. The main buildings in the Tora Prison complex a ...

complex of

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

, where four inmates and four officers died, the authorities opted to collectively punish all the 800-900 prisoners. They reconstructed all the cells into rooms of psychological torture, leaving no source of ventilation and electricity. The inmates were also strictly kept from communicating to the others.

Right to health

According to international laws, a State is liable to ensure prisoners’ right to receive health care. Prison authorities are fully responsible to provide proper medical treatment to the detainees and ensure their well-being.

Covid-19 pandemic

During the pandemic, the overcrowded Jaw prison of Bahrain witnessed a major

Covid-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

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 prisoner. One of the main concerns had been the extensive population of the prison, which made social distancing impossible. On 9 June 2021, an inmate of Jaw prison, Husain Barakat died due to Covid-19 complications. 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 Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...

. 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.