(no subject)

[brynndragon]

Someone on my friend's list posted this over the weekend: You Can't Be a Sweet Cucumber in a Barrel of Vinegar
It's an interview with Philip Zimbardo, a situational psychologist whose greatest work and most painful experience is the Stanford Prison Experiment, who talks about his work and Abu Ghraib. From the interview:
"It's not the bad apples, it's the bad barrels that corrupt good people. Understanding the abuses at this Iraqi prison starts with an analysis of both the situational and systematic forces operating on those soldiers working the night shift in that 'little shop of horrors.'"

Comments

[randysmith]

It's interesting. I'm not so much shocked by that point. Disturbed by it, yes--I'd like to believe I'd do better than that in those situations, and that article sorta requires taking a jaundiced eye to those images. But the thing that shocks me is how little traction it sounds like his research has gotten. The Stanford Prison Experiment was 30 years ago and it sounds like what we've accomplished in that time is deciding that such research is unethical so we can't do it anymore, but not incorporating the results of that research into how we run almost anything. I could imagine that we'd have noticeably less of a crime problem overall in the society if we made our prisons places where it's possible to retain some dignity (I'm being hyperbolic, but I think you get the point).

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I think it's a combination of a Somebody Else's Problem issue and a Cover Your Ass issue (for people currently in the system who have either turned a blind eye to this being done or have found themselves doing horrible things), as well as institutional inertia. Still sucks though.