State officials should not use tasers as devices to compel positive acts. I have made and explained this point elsewhere, but I believe that I have failed to do so previously in this 'blog.<\/p>
When tasers were introduced to policing, they were presented to the public as devices to stop attackers, without potentially lethal force. It would take some contrivance to present a situation in which such use of a taser would not be preferable to lethal force.<\/p>
But tasers also inflict pain. And police officers quickly began using them to hurt<\/em> people until those people complied, even when compliance was a positive act, such as moving one's body in some way. The pain inflicted by a taser is sufficiently severe that it will cause people to act in ways that will lead to their convictions, as when a taser was used to induce a suspect to produce a urine sample. Used to motivate behavior, a taser is a device of torture.<\/em> Judges have acquiesced to this use of torture to compel positive acts. Almost no one speaks out against it. The taser has become a socially accepted device of torture<\/em>.<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The taser has become a socially accepted device of torture<\/em>.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,318,4],"tags":[363,1560,1559],"class_list":["post-11558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-ethics-philosophy","category-public","tag-police","tag-tasers","tag-torture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11558"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11561,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11558\/revisions\/11561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}