Exploring Torture Prevention

This book provides a rigorous, empirically based analysis of torture prevention mechanisms, focusing on how specific legal and policy interventions can reduce torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Drawing on a comparative study of Ethiopia and Kenya, the book examines the association of four clusters of factors — detention safeguards, prosecution of perpetrators of torture and other forms of ill-treatment, complaint mechanisms, and monitoring mechanisms — and the risks of torture and other forms of ill-treatment. It reveals how these factors interact and where prevention efforts should focus to reduce risk factors.

By offering a detailed analysis of torture prevention under the international and African human rights systems, it also analyses the interplay of domestic and international prevention systems towards the effective protection of freedom from torture. The book further demonstrates how ensuring police accountability through civilian oversight of police conduct enhances prevention efforts. Moreover, it explores the role of national human rights institutions and argues for a flexible mandate to enhance their preventive function.

Finally, by analysing the interplay of these four clusters of factors and their impact on prevention, the book advances a synergistic model of torture prevention that is both practically grounded and theoretically rigorous.

This book will be of great interest to policymakers, researchers, academics, and human rights practitioners working on detention conditions, police accountability, and torture prevention across Africa and beyond.