Doctors in prison: documenting torture in detention.

Introduction The documentation of torture inside a prison raises a certain number of issues specific to the fact that those people interviewed are still in custody. Quite obviously, there will be pitfalls to avoid, and safeguards to ensure, that will not be present when documenting torture within the relative safety and calm of a centre for torture survivors. In a prison, the prisoners who have suffered ill-treatment and torture, are at least potentially still at risk in the sense that they are still in the custody of the authorities responsible for their suffering torture. They are not yet “torture survivors”, but indeed still “torture victims”, however much we may want to get away from the stigma of this term. This essential fact, the prisoners not yet being “home free”, as they may well be in a torture rehabilitation centre abroad or at least out of reach of the potential torturers, will condition the way doctors document ill-treatment and torture inside prisons and other places of custody. When prisoners are seen outside prison, in a rehabilitation centre or similar situation for example, the documentation of torture will be a completely different story. Such centres will hopefully offer ideal conditions for medically examining torture survivors and documenting torture. These centres have trained medical staff, with the necessary medical and psychological skills and knowledge who can provide therapy. Most important, there may be few, if any, time limitations for interviews, and repetition of interviews according to need and desire will be the rule, not the exception. The doctorpatient relationship in a therapeutic centre will obviously be completely different from that between a prisoner in custody and, on the one hand, the local “prison doctor”, or, on the other hand, a visiting outside doctor.