After selling their lies and plans for the war to the America people, congress had given President Bush carte blanche to bring justice to those who caused pain and destruction on American soil. Abu Ghraib Prison, also known as Baghdad Central Prison, became the U.S Army detention center for captured Iraqis. “For decades under Saddam Hussein, many prisoners who were taken to the Abu Ghraib prison never came out. It was the centerpiece of Saddam's empire of fear, and those prisoners who did make it out told nightmarish tales of torture beyond imagining – and executions without reason.” (Abuse of Iraqi POWS by GIs Probed, 2004) In 2004 rumors began to surface, regarding the abuse of prisoners held by the U.S army. Initially the U.S media expressed little interest to the accusations, until photographic evidence emerged, exposing the violation of the prisoner’s human rights.
The aim of this experiment which was carried out by social psychologist Philip Zimbardo which was to test the popular assumption the public assumes of whether most people attribute the brutal atmosphere in the prison to the personal characterstics of the inmates. This statement was supported by the fact that they were criminals. It was also to test whether people who choose to become prison guards have an authority like personality and enjoy pushing as well as punishing people around. This experiment was to take place for two weeks and volunteers were being paid 15 dollars a day. The design of this experiment was to built a number of controls into the experiment.
Little did he know that standing up for what he believed in was going to possibly get him killed. Just days after the picture appeared, the government arrested him. Taking him into a prison for intelligence, he was in solitary confinement for months. After seven or eight months he had a court trial and they didn’t tell him where he was going. They blindfolded him, which he thought this was just a part of his questioning.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted to observe how subjects took on the role of “prisoner” and “guard” in a mock prison. The study was conducted by Stanford University’s professor of psychology, Philip G. Zimbardo. An advertisement was placed in a local paper, offering fifteen dollars per day for one to two weeks, to male college students interested in participating in the psychological study of prison life. There were 21 men selected and split half into “guards” and half into “prisoners”. To the surprise of the selected “prisoners”, they were arrested in the same fashion an actual criminal would be arrested.
09/07/2012 Stanford Prison Experiment Zimbardo’s prisoner-guard experiment is where a group of young men were rounded up by the police department and taken to a mock jail in Stanford university (Alexander, 2001). They were treated exactly like real prisoners would have been treated: sprayed for lice, strip searched and locked up with chains round their ankles (Alexander, 2001). There were men who were chosen to play the guards and they were given the authority to dictate 24-hours a day rules and soon turned to humiliating the prisoners to break their will (Alexander, 2001). “‘In a few days, the role dominated the person,’ Zimbardo -- now president-elect of the American Psychological Association -- recalled. ‘They became guards and prisoners.’ So disturbing was the transformation that Zimbardo ordered the experiment abruptly ended,” (Alexander, 2001).
This was the prison system in the 1700’s. Prisoners were punished by beheading, hung, whipped, and stoned. In the late 1700’s, Benjamin Henry Latrobe built the Walnut Street Jail it was used to reform prisoners instead of harsh punishment (Goodban, 2006). Prisoners received the bare necessities to sit, sleep, and eat were their only luxuries. When the death penalty was no more the jail suffered overcrowding which led to riots, escapes, and prison guards were attacked.
Description This case revolves around the accusation of approximately 100 second-classmen at the West Point Academy that might have cheated on the electrical engineering exam. This type of cheating was a violation of the Honor Code with the consequence of being expelled from the Academy. Lt. General Sidney Berry was in charge of how to manage and/or discipline all the cadets that were involved in this incident. Berry had two paths he needed to deliberate. First, he had to decide whether to investigate each cadet accused of cheating.
The participants were told to type characters into the computer and not to touch the ‘SHIFT’ key as it would cause a computer crash, they were paid for their participation. Part way through the study the computer was made to crash and the experimenter accused the participant of touching the ‘SHIFT’ key and gave false incriminating evidence, that she ‘had seen it with her own eyes’. The experimenter then asked for a hand written confession stating it was their fault and would forfeit 80% of their promised fee, a negative consequence. 80% of participants signed the confession, whilst over 50% gave confabulated details (gave false evidence to fill in the gaps) and personality showed no impact on the signing of a false confession. The research showed just how easy it to elicit a false confession from someone and these are more likely to be a result of situation rather than personality.
One of those good points was how the American justice system treats certain juvenile delinquents. Stevenson remembered a case where the judge declared that a 14 year old would be waived, meaning he would stand trial as an adult. He said to himself “How can a judge turn a child into an adult? The judge must have super powers.” He believes that the average African American male is not really protected through the justice system, mainly because it was not built to protect them. So after the judge made his ruling Stevenson thought of ways he could turn this young, poor, black male into a 74 year old, wealthy, white man.
Zimbardo and his colleagues constructed the basement of Stanford University into an imitated prison. A newspaper ad was posted asking for male volunteers to play the role of prisoners and guards for two weeks in return getting compensated fifteen dollars a day. Twenty two Caucasian male Stanford University students were elected to take part of the experiment after each completing a questionnaire based on family history, and physical and mental health and followed by an interview. Participants were randomly assigned the role of prisoners or guards. Prisoners were arrested at their homes and were treated like criminals.