All in a Day's Work

Revision with unchanged content. In April 2004, photographs revealed images of American soldiers torturing prisoners held at a facility in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Numerous detainees were photographed hooded and naked, piled upon one another. Others had wires attached to genitals and extremities, or were assaulted by attack dogs. That these abuses occurred at Saddam Huessein's most notorious of prisons added a cruel irony. Public questions focused on why seemingly ordinary people engage in this type of behavior, yet individualized explanations fail to account for the prevalence and systematic use of torture at the prison. I examine documents to probe organizational culture, structure and processes, and their intersection with individuals and organizational context to explain how organizational features contributed to the systematic use of torture at that facility. What recent historical and political processes served to influence organizational culture, structure and processes that facilitated or promoted the use of torture? How did torture come to be defined as an instrumental means of achieving the organization's goals? What organizational factors were key in promoting a setting for torture, and how did these essentially intersect with individual to shape processes such as perception, action, and problem-solving?