Europe had largely stopped using judicial torture before it formally banned it
For most of recorded history, courts treated coercive interrogation as a legitimate way to reach the truth. By the time European states formally abolished it in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the practice had already dwindled to a marginal role in their criminal justice systems. Explaining why it faded remains a historical puzzle.
Ancient, medieval and early modern societies generally considered the practice both legal and moral, and they distinguished it from painful punishments handed down after a verdict. Where law regulated it, only certain methods were permitted. Citizens could usually be subjected to it only in exceptional cases involving grave charges such as treason, often when some evidence already existed, while foreigners and slaves enjoyed far weaker protection. In early medieval Europe it was rare, becoming more common between 1200 and 1400, though it remained labour-intensive and reserved for accusations like murder, treason or theft. Islamic law traditionally held that confessions obtained this way were invalid.
Historians offer several reasons for the decline. Enlightenment thinkers raised the value placed on the individual person. Courts lowered the standard of proof needed to convict, removing the pressure to extract confessions. Popular attitudes stopped seeing pain as morally redemptive, and imprisonment spread as an alternative to execution and bodily punishment. China, which had practised judicial torture for more than two thousand years, banned it in 1905.
Formal abolition did not end the practice. It became more widespread in Europe in the early 20th century with secret police, two world wars and totalitarian states. Revulsion at those abuses helped launch the human rights movement after World War II, and today international law forbids torture for every state in every circumstance, one of the most absolute prohibitions it contains.
Defining the term remains contested. The United Nations convention requires involvement of an official, while some legal systems include armed groups and organised crime. Most victims are poor or marginalised crime suspects rather than political prisoners, and removing incommunicado detention has proved one of the more effective reforms.
Source: Torture
