Abstract
Police conduct and police use of force is a topic that has been debated and examined from diverse multidisciplinary perspectives throughout the 21st century. With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, a call for accountability for systematic racism and racial adversity within the criminal justice system has caused many to question the police’s legitimacy. Dr. Laurence Ralph’s book The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence furthers the discussion of police violence and torture while educating the reader on the deeper institutionalized and systemic aspects that contribute to police officers' use of illegitimate methods to extract information and conduct their policing duties.
Ralph is a professor of anthropology at Princeton University and has spent over a decade engaged in the study of police violence and police torture from various perspectives. His other book, Renegade Dreams: Living through Injury in Gangland Chicago (2014), addresses inner-city violence and victims' experiences surviving this violence. Ralph’s expertise on these topics provides readers of The Torture Letters with the guidance needed when embarking on understanding the complex subject of police violence, adding to scholarly understanding of the institutional contours of this problem while offering a discussion that is accessible to the general public.
In The Torture Letters, Ralph explores the history of torture perpetrated by the Chicago police. Ralph highlights how police torture is a deep-rooted problem which goes beyond violent interactions between officers and civilians on the streets but is something that is perpetuated and practiced in various settings. He makes a compelling argument that police violence can and should be understood as a human rights issue. Specifically, he explains that because the police force is a central part of the criminal justice system, and police violence and officer misconduct are embedded in the structure of this system, further discussion of the implications this has for human rights is needed.
The Torture Letters is divided into four parts; Part 1 “The Black Box,” Part 2 “The B-Team,” Part 3 “Charging Genocide,” and Part 4 “Bad Guys,” each chapter unpacking different dimensions of the history of police torture in Chicago during the last few decades. By utilizing archival data, focus groups, and ethnography, Ralph delivers a well-thought-out depiction of narratives and documentation of the experiences and facts related to police torture. Ralph employs what he names "ethnographic lettering" in which he shares the findings and reflections learned while being immersed in the context of police torture. Not only does he share his thoughts and findings, but he offers practical suggestions and implications based on the findings and directly addresses policymakers, future mayors, and participants in his study, students, and others through his letters.
Ralph starts his book by presenting Chicago’s policing history, providing background information on funding, organizational structure, and local police practices. Ralph conceptualizes police torture as a "torture tree," describing the root as representing the collective fear created by public funding. The trunk is the police use of force continuum, and the branches are the manifestation of actions. He explains that the police’s use of force can be understood as varying along a “force continuum,” that he defines as "a set of guidelines, established by the city, for how much force police officers are permitted to use against a criminal suspect in a given situation" (8). This continuum of force is regulated by the judgment and discretion of individual officers, meaning that the officers are the authorities who decide when and what level of force can be used against suspects in the moment of interaction. In combination with the ever-growing militarized approaches to conflict, the force continuum inclines officers to view residents as enemy combatants and their patrolling area as a combat zone. This orientation drives officers to be overly confrontational in their encounters with civilians. Ralph contextualizes police torture in relation to the early days of imperialism and racism in Chicago. Narratives of former police officers, victims, and survivors of police torture, attorneys, and protesters are shared, all of which provide a multifaceted understanding of the power-dynamics, social and organizational contexts, and implications of police violence. Through these narratives, Ralph highlights the many ways that police violence is structurally embedded in American society and is highly influenced by historical and modern events, informing officers' social roles and functions and the nature of their encounters with civilians.
The key concept of part one is the “Black Box,” which conceptualizes the social space in which the true information about the torturous activity is kept hidden. Concealing the torture non-whites experience at the hand of police officers in Chicago became a known tool of repression in this Black Box. Ralph further unpacks the Black Box concept by exploring the experience and the implications of the legal aftermath of Andrew Wilson’s torture under the former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge. Commander Burge was one of the main officers accused of being involved in coercing false confessions from several hundreds of Black men in Chicago between 1972 and 1991.
Ralph illuminates the many aspects of police torture with open letters to the youth of color in Chicago, offering information, guidance, and support. In part two, "The B Team", Ralph further examines officers' roles and perspectives in relation to the torture and violence used as a tool in their occupation. Recounting some of the most poignant narratives of individuals subjected to police torture and also those of the torturers, Ralph delves into a third dimension, which is the activism aimed at ending this impunity.
In part three, "Charging Genocide", Ralph presents the story of the activist group "We Charge Genocide". Their name originated from a petition to the UN in 1951 documenting over 150 racial killings of Blacks in the US. Statements from activist members, historical and archival data are considered together with letters addressed to key figures who experienced racial violence. In the fourth and final part of the book, "Bad Guys," stories of Richard Zuley, a police officer who transferred torture practices from his days as a Chicago police officer to his interrogation of high profile targets imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Ralph relates Zuley’s practices in a military setting to what he learned in Chicago policing, adding personal stories from the Zuley’s victims.
The Torture Letters offers insight into the grim reality of police conduct by examining the torture tactics used by Chicago officers. The book chronicles, new details about already known truths of police use of inhumane and illegitimate practices; importantly, the book also explains some of the unknown ways in which police torture is embedded in and impacts the community in turn reinforcing the pervasiveness of structural racism.
Shedding light on the contrast of experiences of many of the actors who in one way or another interacted with torture perpetrated by the Chicago police, The Torture Letters explicates a central force of structural racism in the US. Ralph aims to explore how officers navigate the force continuum, but with this book, he accomplishes so much more. The ways Ralph shares his findings, implications, reflections, empathy, and support in letters directly addressing the youth of color in Chicago, politicians, students, and victims of torture illustrate how Ralph, throughout the book, keeps the reader close to his heart.