Torture in the Time of COVID-19

The core question of this paper is “How, to this point, has the pandemic affected torture and ill-treatment?”. By “affected” we mean: modality, victim and perpetrator type, and prevalence. We begin with a brief outline of how and why certain behaviors and practices seen during the pandemic qualify as torture and/or ill-treatment. One can think of the framework of legal norms relating to torture as one type of antecedent to the critical juncture that is the pandemic. We then use an original six-path framework to explore torture-related occurrences around the world during the pandemic and, at the end of each section, derive testable hypotheses. Once enough time has passed for observational data to become available, these hypotheses can help serve as a guide for scholars systematically studying the torture-related dynamics of the pandemic. In our conclusion, we offer some thoughts on the anticipated legacy of the crisis: what pandemic-era dynamics might or might not be expected to persist once COVID-19 is brought under control.