In the past three decades, international and regional human rights bodies have developed an ever-lengthening list of measures that states are required to adopt in order to prevent torture. But do any of these mechanisms actually work? This study is the first systematic analysis of the effectiveness of torture prevention. Primary research was conducted in 16 countries, looking at their experience of torture and prevention mechanisms over a 30-year period. Data was analysed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. Prevention measures do work, although some are much more effective than others. Most important of all are the safeguards that should be applied in the first hours and days after a person is taken into custody. Notification of family and access to an independent lawyer and doctor have a significant impact in reducing torture. The investigation and prosecution of torturers and the creation of independent monitoring bodies are also important in reducing torture. An important caveat to the conclusion that prevention works is that is actual practice in police stations and detention centres that matters - not treaties ratified or laws on the statute book.

Moving past theoretical critiques of human rights, this book considers how we might translate situational analyses of torture into effective strategies for preventing it.

The prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment or punishment has a special status. It is the foremost international human rights norm protecting persons from attacks on their dignity and integrity. Consequently, it has been at the forefront of a series of developments in international human rights law and international law more broadly. Having withstood sustained challenges to its absolute nature in the 'war on terror', it has broadened its scope of application, becoming more sophisticated and complex in the process. The prohibition of torture increasingly interacts with other fields of human rights law, such as non-discrimination law, international criminal law, international humanitarian law, and international migration law. The Transformation of the Prohibition of Torture in International Law analyses the nature and significance of this transformation and looks into the scope of the prohibition's further evolution. Empirical scholarship, innovative human rights body practice, and challenges from activists, particularly from the Global South, have focused on the relational nature of torture and other ill-treatment, its embeddedness in wider structures of power, and the role of international law in legitimizing-if not facilitating-widespread suffering, from mass incarceration to poverty and climate change. This analysis reveals an inherent tension in the prohibition between a conventional, narrow focus on direct State violence and a wide lens encompassing myriad forms of suffering. To retain its validity and effectiveness in the twenty-first century, argues Lutz Oette, the prohibition on torture must navigate this tension and successfully address and transform abusive power asymmetries.

A comprehensive insight into the valuable work carried out by one of the Council of Europe's highly influential mechanisms, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). Since its inception in 1989, specialist members of the CPT (lawyers, prosecutors, prison experts, doctors, psychiatrists, etc.) have visited thousands of police stations, prisons, immigration detention centres, psychiatric hospitals and other places of detention all over Europe, to monitor the living conditions (hygiene, provision of food and drink, health care, etc.) of those being detained. Following these visits, the CPT issues reports suggesting improvements and laying down standards. The purpose of this book is twofold. In the first part, the authors explain the background and origins of the CPT, its membership and modus operandi, as well as how it interacts with other bodies, such as the UN's Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) and the national preventive mechanisms (NPMs). In the second part, the authors describe the CPT's key findings and standards in the main situations of deprivation of liberty (police, prison, immigration detention, mental health and social care). In a detailed appendix, the authors provide summaries of the key CPT findings for the 47 states visited by the CPT