A Higher Standard of Human Rights
To The Age Friday, April 04, 2008
We learn something about human nature from the unending succession of horror stories told by ex-inmates of orphanages, borstals, mental hospitals and other human zoos.
There is a tendency to exploit those who are left in our charge and at our mercy. Opportunities to gratify underlying urges for sex, violence or mental cruelty are all-too-often irresistible.
Yes, there are those who consciously seek forms of employment which will provide a supply of helpless victims. But the record proves that many average people, innocently taking such jobs, often also become complicit - or active - in the abuse of inmates.
Even where strict behavioural monitoring is introduced, such as a ban on physical contact, the human imagination quickly devises no-touch forms of mental torture. Insititutionalisation is an unsafe policy, and should avoided wherever possible.
The minimum requirement for an inmate situation not to degenerate into an abuse factory is that staff consciously recognise and openly acknowledge the dark underside of the human psyche. This is a rare standard of self-knowledge. Also required, building on the first admission, is a vow to daily renounce the opportunities for inter-personal abuse provided by their custodial powers. This is a rare standard of virtue.
Philip O'Carroll
View Comments Printer Friendly Version Email this Letter Refer a Friend