Torture In Residential Schools Essay

It is absolutely abhorrent that you imply that torture was used both in residential schools and as prison segregation. You know very well that torture was abolished world wide in the late 18th to early 19th century’s. Therefore it is absolutely preposterous to accuse the Canadian state of the use of torture. The residential schools were meant to be the aboriginal children’s best chance for success in the new country we have created. It is true; we were hard on them and if they did not abide by the rules they would get punished but that is not to say that that punishment equaled torture. The marks were not that deep. In addition, I do not understand what you mean by psychological torture, in the past torture was purely physical, leaving …show more content…
It was meant to be a less harsh method for the more physical punishments assigned to a prisoner. Therefore I would like to state, as I did above, that psychological punishment should not be considered a form of torture, especially when the intentions regarding it are good. I do agree that its purpose did shift from rehabilitative to retributive since the cells were convenient to hold some of our more unruly prisoners. I also agree with the symptoms accompanied with segregation, as the prison staff has outlined the same symptoms to me. That is the main reason why its use diminished for such a long period of time after its first introduction. With that being said even though segregation is not the most apt solution for punishment I would not go so far as to say that it is torture. As stated above psychological effects had very little to do with the torturers motives, it was just a side effect of the physical punishment committed. In addition, I do not like the insinuation that Canada has kept up the tradition of torture when all other countries have abolished it. That is not who we