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Stunning Morality:
The Moral Dimensions of Stun Belts
By
Lawrence M. Hinman
Department of Philosophy
University of San Diego
5998 Alcalá Park
San Diego, CA 92110
Voice: 619-260-4787
Fax: 619-260-4227
E-mail: hinman@sandiego.edu
Introduction
O.J. was supposed to wear one on the visit to the crime scene, but he didn’t. Along with striped uniforms, they are supposed to be standard attire in chain gangs in several states, although they have been outlawed in others. They are often part of a defendant’s outfit in court and in visits to medical facilities. Introduced in the early 1990’s as a variant of stun guns and stun shields, the stun belt is becoming increasingly popular among prison and correctional officers as a "safe" way of controlling potentially unruly prisoners.
Stun belts raise a number of interesting moral issues, in part because they simultaneously call forth conflicting moral intuitions for some of us. On the one hand, there is something about them that appeals to a sense of what one might call moral efficiency. They hold out the promise of controlling potential violent behavior at the minimum cost: they are very painful and incapacitating in the moment, but according to defenders leave no serious long-term aftereffects. They offer to protect innocent bystanders, such as observers in a courtroom, with 100% efficiency and no danger to others. There are no stray bullets or wildly swinging nightsticks. On the other hand, there is something morally frightening about them. Amnesty International has called for a ban on them.(1) They are so efficient, so implacable, that their power scares us. No one can run from them. There is virtually no contest between the operator and victim. The operator simply presses a button, and the effect is instantaneous and completely incapacitating. Just as the guillotine was promoted as "humane" because of its efficiency and the way in which it reduced suffering, so too the stun belt frightens us with its efficiency and allegedly humane quality.
Let’s begin with a short consideration of the facts of the case: what stun belts are, how they work, etc. Then we will look more closely at the case in favor of the use of stun belts, and then turn to the arguments against them. I will then conclude with comments on the range of situations in which they are morally permissible.
Stun Belts: The Basics
History. Stun technology began with cattle prods and electrified fences, devices used to issue a brief electrical shock to control animals. Stun guns, sometimes called tasers, paved the way for the stun belt, but the operator has to be close enough to the victim to be able shoot the electrodes into him. Stun batons have become the instrument of choice for torture in many countries because they inflict such a high degree of pain but leave comparatively few signs afterward of the extent of the torture. Stun shields were the next step, and they allowed persons in close proximity to potentially violent individuals to protect themselves. Anyone touching the stun shield would experience the same kind of shock that comes from a stun gun. Finally, stun belts came on the scene. They had many of the alleged advantages of the earlier technology with no risk to the operator. Once someone is wearing a stun belt, the shock can be administered remotely from up to 300 feet away.
Stun belts, which are manufactured in the United States by Stun Tech, Inc. of Clevland, have become increasingly popular with law enforcement agencies. Dennis Kaufman, the president of Stun Tech, reports that he has sold over 1,100 to various law enforcement and penal agencies, including two hundred to the U.S. Marshalls Service and one hundred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.(2) Wisconsin and Queen Anne’s County in Maryland(3) are now using them in chain gangs, joining Alabama, Arizona, Florida, and Iowa.
The Shock. Stun belts administer a shock of 50,000 volts with between three and four milliamps for a period of eight seconds. The extremely low amperage prevents the high voltage from being fatal. The shock, nonetheless, is very painful, and victims are immediately incapacitated. They are knocked off their feet and usually writhe and twitch on the ground. They lose muscle control. There are conflicting reports about whether they also lose control of their bladder and bowels. Two electrodes touch the skin above the left kidney, and apparently it can take months in some cases for the burn marks to heal.
The Physical Effects. Except for the wounds where the electrodes are in contact with the skin, there seem to be few physical aftereffects to being stunned in almost all cases. Indeed, being stunned is often a part of the training program for operators of stun technologies. But this medical picture is far from complete or clear. There is at least one case of a prison guard named Harry Landis who, as part of his training in using stun technology, was stunned twice by a stun shield and collapsed and died shortly thereafter of heart dirhythmia, apparently as a result of the shock.(4) He had a history of heart problems, and there does not appear to be conclusive evidence that stun belts are in fact safe for those who such medical histories. Although one health study has been undertaken on stun belts by Robert Stratbucker of the University of Nebraska that claimed the felts were safe, the study was only done on anesthetized pigs.(5)
Psychological Effects. The psychological effects of stun belts have not been subject to close study, and most claims about these effects are either conjectural or anecdotal. Two types of psychological effects are possible: the psychological effects of simply wearing the belt, and the psychological effects of having been shocked by the belt.
Presumably one important variable here would be the victim’s perception of the belt’s operator. If a person believes that the operator would not activate the belt unless he did something clearly forbidden, then he will presumably experience less anxiety (all other things being equal) than if he believes the operator will activate the belt randomly or capriciously. The underlying variable here is the sense of control. Let me advance a hypothesis which I cannot subject to rigorous empirical tests here. The hypothesis is: the more an individual feels that he can control whether he will be shocked or not, the less anxiety he will feel, all other things being equal. The converse is: the less the person has a sense of control, the greater the person’s sense of anxiety.
If this hypothesis is true, it will be quite difficult to measure anxiety levels in real life situations without subjecting individuals to random shocks—hardly something we want to justify in the name of experimental design. Nor will we gain much insight form individuals who volunteer to shock themselves, since they will presumably retain some sense of control in most cases simply by virtue of having chosen to be shocked. The more difficult cases are, for example, prisoners who, whether rightly or wrongly, believe that their guard might shock them at any moment for reasons unrelated to their current conduct.
Even more difficult to imagine are the psychological effects of stun belts when used for torture. Being in a belt and randomly shocked for days on end could have devastating psychological impact, especially since the belt has an inescapability about it that set it apart even from other forms of stun technology.
Types of Uses. Stun belts have been employed in a variety of situations that we know about. First, they are used in cases in which prisoners might come into contact with the public or have higher than usual opportunities for escape. These include:
In addition to these uses, it should also be noted that stun belts are now being used routinely in some:
These various uses cover wisely different types of populations, including persons who are not considered violent criminals. Courtroom appearances may include individuals who are charged with a crime but not (yet) convicted, although they will usually be deemed by the appropriate law enforcement agency to be dangerous or at risk of escape. Interactions with medical personnel and transportation outside of prison include all types of prisoners and those being held for trial. Those who work on chain gangs are typically not high security prisoners, since prison authorities are understandably reluctant to allow such prisoners outside the prison walls.
Frequency of Use. It is difficult to get statistics on the use of stun belts except from the manufacturer. According to one interview with Mr. Kaufman at the end of 1996, "the belt had been strapped to federal and state prisoners about 26,000 times and activated 25 times, including nine accidentally."(6) The accidental activation number is disturbing, especially if it is seen as a percentage of the total number of times the belt has been activated. The ratio of the number of times activated to the total number of time worn, however, is impressive. What is appealing about this is that it would appear that it works, that is, it reduces the number of times it is necessary to use it. The ideal deterrent, at least from one perspective, would be something that never had to be used. The stun belt seems to be moving toward that ideal.
A Note on Rhetoric. It’s worth noting that advocates of stun technology have a certain rhetorical advantage in the use of the word "stun." There is a good, everyday English meaning of "stunned" which is roughly equivalent to "very surprised:" "I was stunned when I heard the news that I had won the prize." Other uses are also innocuous: "What a stunning outfit that is." But of course this is not the kind of stunning we are talking about here when we discuss stun belts. The use of the word "stun" rhetorically tones down the possibly dire consequences of this technology and the awful pain it inflicts. Just as it is now in vogue for gambling interests to refer to themselves as "gaming" interests, so too the very use of the word "stun" connotes a far better image than the reality may justify.
The Case for Stun Belts
It seems that there are several arguments that can be made in favor of stun belts. Most are utilitarian in character, emphasizing the way in which the adoption of stun belts would reduce the overall amount of pain and suffering in the world.
Minimizing Long-Term Physical Damage
One of the clear advantages of stun belts, at least when contrasted with being hit over the head with a club or shot, is that stun belts minimize long-term physical damage. Certainly some claims about the safety of stun belts are exaggerated, but more moderate claims are very defensible. Several training programs require that operators actually be shocked themselves so that they can appreciate the full effect of the stun.(7)
Minimizing Risk to Unintended Victims
Because the effects of stun belts are limited solely to the intended victims, it seems highly unlikely that anyone else could accidentally be harmed. This is certainly quite a different situation than with guns, water canons, and other such means. And this is certainly morally significant: anything that protects the innocent is, all other things being equal, morally preferable to something which puts them at risk.
Minimizing such risk would apparently be a morally weightier consideration in some situations than others. In courtrooms and medical situations, for example, the risk to the innocent would seem to be quite high and the use of stun belts more justified. However, even in prisons this is a significant moral plus, since prisoners should certainly count as innocent bystanders in respect to the violent actions of some other prisoner. They have a moral right to be protected against incidental violence equal to anyone present in a courtroom.
Protecting Operators
Certainly another moral benefit of stun belts is that they provide a greater degree of protection for the operators than many other methods of control. It is helpful to think of this in terms of a ratio between effectiveness of control and protection of the controller. Other methods, such as rifles, may offer guards a relatively high degree of protection, but they in fact offer them less control. Usually greater control is bought at the price of higher risk for the controllers, but in this case that is not true.
It is important to realize that as a society we ask a lot of those who staff our prisons. They are subject to danger and to a constantly brutalizing environment and compensated relatively little for it, either in terms of money or respect. Stun belts may reduce the risk to those who endure considerable risk in the enforcement of society’s verdicts.
Moreover, prisons run by stun belts might eventually be quite different from prisons as we know them. The present situation encourages a self-selection process in which prison guards are more likely to be people who are attracted to such a violent environment. Some might want to argue that stun belts could eventually restructure the prison sufficiently to attract a different kind of person as the typical prison guard. This could be a person less at home in the world of physical violence.
Eventual Deterrent Effect
If it is true the punishments are more effective when they are administered immediately and with certainty, stun belts offer the promise of a high level of deterrence. Indeed, the claim is that they are so effective that the belts would hardly ever have to be used. Prisoners, knowing that they would experience excruciating pain and fail at whatever offense they were attempting to commit, would simply give refrain from trying to do something for which they would be shocked. The result, advocates argue, would be a prison in which all the inmates obey the rules and serve out their time in peaceful, or at least orderly and non-violent, coexistence. The best deterrent is the one that never has to be used.
If stun belts worked in this way, it is easy to see the moral advantage. Prisons would become less dangerous for everyone, and prisoners would be conditioned—at least for the time when they are in prison—to behave in non-violent ways. They would be forced, or at least threatened, into living in outward manifestations the kind of life we want them to live after they are released from prison. Everyone, it would seem, could benefit from this. The prisoners would be fact be more rehabilitated than they are now; the prison personnel would be safer; and there would certainly be less physical violence and suffering in the world.
The Case Against Stun Belts
Despite the apparent attractiveness to many people of this new technology, there are serious moral considerations that weigh against it. Let me outline several of them here.
The Slippery Slope: The Use and Abuse of Stun Belts
One of the principal arguments against stun belts is not how they are used now, but how they might be abused in the future. Let me sketch out several variations on this important theme.
The Perfect Prison? Imagine the following scenario, which could be a scene out of some science fiction movie about the not-too-distant future. All inmates in a prison are required to wear stun belts. Guards are encased in bullet proof plastic observation posts, and all possible aspects of the prison are made of transparent plastic—an updated version of Bentham’s Panopticon for the new millenium. Bentham, in the interest of creating a more humane prison, proposed that prisons be constructed in a circular fashion around a central guard tower. Guards could look straight through the cells to the outside world since the exterior and interior walls would be transparent. Prisoners, however, could not see one another, since the walls separating them from each other would be opaque. In this new version of the Panoptican, any prisoner who attempts to do something prohibited, such as escape from the prison or rape or immolate another prisoner, would be zapped by a guard.
The scenario sounds eerie and there is something morally suspect about its coldness. Before pursuing this, however, it is important to realize that the contrasting scenario may well be one in which the prisons are largely controlled by the inmates in a form of gang government. This is morally significant, because there is a clear moral difference between choosing between the stun belt scenario on the one hand and, on the other hand, either the gang rule model of prison life or else a model in which prisons are run by the duly constituted authorities. It is an empirical question which of these two models is more dominant in today’s prisons.
This also raises questions about the earlier argument that stun belts could encourage a class of prison guards less at home in the world of violence. However, it could also go in a quite different direction, attracting precisely those who are more at home in a world of electronic domination and torture.
The Possibility of Abuse. The slippery slope is more acute when one considers the possibility that stun belts can be abuse by those in control of them. In prison situations, for example, operators could use such belts (and the threats they allow them to make) for simply sadistic purposes or to coerce prisoners to do whatever the operator wants. Certainly this possibility is already present to some degree in prison situations, but at present there is something like a balance of power. It is misleading to say that the prisoners run the prisons—after all, if that were literally true, they would simply set themselves free. What is true, however, is that the prisoners have a tremendous amount of potential control over the lives of other prisoners. To a lesser extent, there are trade-offs in power between guard and prisoners, such that guards permit certain activities (usually relating to drugs, sex, and gambling) in return for reciprocal favors from the inmates. But in a prison where all prisoners were forced to wear stun belts, this complex power relationship would be clearly upset.
Within the prison situation, the widespread use of stun belts could so immobilize a prison population that it would open the door to two kinds of abuse. First, on an individual level, it might allow sadistically-oriented guards to act out their worst desires without fear of retribution from the prison population—what, in the literature on stun belts from Stun Tech, is euphemistically called "officer gratificaiton." Second, there is an increased possibility of institutional abuse, a possibility that may be exacerbated as prisons are privatized and become for-profit enterprises. Traditionally, one of the checks on overcrowding, intolerable food, etc. has been the prison riot. If all prisoners were eventually forced to wear stun belts, riots would be virtually impossible. This certainly makes it more possible that prisoners will be subjected to inhumane conditions.
The type of abuse that Amnesty International and other human rights organizations are principally concerned about is even more extreme. It is easy to imagine the effects of such a device in the hands of torturers. Although it would not be different in kind from much of the current torture, it would be significantly different in its degree of effectiveness. Once encased in the belt, a prisoner (or anyone else) would be at the complete mercy of the one who controls the belt. Once such devices are manufactured on a large scale, it is easy to imagine them falling into the hands of torturers.
Other, less extreme forms of abuse are also easy to imagine. Indeed, it might not require imagination at all, just opening one’s eyes. Consider the use of stun belts on chain gangs. Such gangs do not usually have violent prisoners—they are kept under closer control. Rather, they are composed of prisoners who pose much less of a physical threat. A strong case can be made that the primary purpose of chain gangs is in fact political. If Caesar’s wife not only had to be faithful but seen to be faithful, so too our prisoners now much not only suffer but be seen to suffer. They must not be thought of as watching television and lifting weights, but as toiling under a blazing hot sun on some brutally hard task that could be done in a matter of minutes with a bulldozer. If one accepts this premise about the political purpose of chain gangs, then we already have a situation in some states (such as Wisconsin) where stun belts are in effect being used to promote political goals rather than for any legitimate rehabilitative purposes.
The slope becomes even scarier when we imagine the gradual extension of this technology beyond the narrow domain of jails and prisons. What of its use in wartime situations? Imagine, for example, if the United States were part of a United Nations peace keeping force that took a large number of prisoners. Would such technology be justified as a means of controlling enemy prisoners in wartime? On the domestic front, given the xenophobic mood of certain segments of the country, it is not hard to imagine that some might feel such technology should be used in the detention and deportation of illegal aliens. What of hospitals for the criminally insane? What of what used to be called "reform schools" for violent adolescents? Indeed, given the alacrity with which many have been ready to see boys as suffering from hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder, one begins to find some plausibility in Foucaultian visions of society as prison. The final step, of course, is some unscrupulous small group of "leaders" to convince the masses that wearing such belts would be the ultimate protection: such a society would have no crime, no disorder.
The Detachment Effect
Perhaps one of the most disturbing features of stun belts is the way in which they can be employed with relative detachment, and this too threatens to add grease to any slope that is already slippery. Although presumably no one would argue that there is anything morally commendable about clubs and guns, they do differ from stun belts in an important respect: they bring the administrator of the violence more directly into contact with the pain being inflicted. This is particularly the case with clubs. With stun belts, the operator—indeed, the very word "operator" implies a detachment that belies the harshness of the effect—does not come into direct contact with the suffering of those who are shocked.
This type of detachment may well increase the possibility of abuse for the following reason. Stanley Milgram’s studies on obedience to authority suggest that, the more a person was removed from the direct consequences of shocking someone, they more likely they were to administer a lethal shock in compliance with orders. If someone has to put another person’s hand on a plate before a shock can be administered, that person is less likely to administer a lethal shock than if they simply have to push a button. Similarly, it is reasonable to believe that stun belts leave themselves open to greater abuse because those who operate them do not have to administer the violence first hand, as it were.
The Larger Questions
Stun belts are philosophically interesting for another reason: their possible use forces us to rethink some fundamental questions, particularly ones about the nature and purpose of punishment and penal institutions. Oddly, they offer the promise of a certain kind of success—control of the prison population—and that forces us to ask what we really want in a prison. If all we want is an adult version of the child’s "time out," then the stun belt actually seems to provide a relatively effective means to this end. If, however, we are seeking some kind of change of heart—a naďve and futile hope, in the eyes of many—then the power for domination offered by stun belts is less appealing. They are more likely to produce cowering automata than individuals who have freely chosen to live a reformed life. Whatever motives the stun belt produces for conforming to society’s demands, these motives would seem to have little to do with the values of the common good. Instead, they would simply promote acting out of fear. Once the source of the fear (the stun belt) has been removed, will former prisoners have any motivation to obey the law except the threat of once again being in the belt?
There is another fundamental question raised by the possible widespread use of the stun belt. Earlier, I suggested that there is a balance of power in prisons between the authorities and the inmates. On a larger scale, there is some kind of rough balance of power between the lawful and the unlawful in society as well. If too many people disobey the law, we are as likely to change the law as to incarcerate all the offenders—or at least to ignore most of the offenses. Widespread disobedience or disregard for a particular law establishes a kind of pressure for change, a change in the laws, their enforcement, or the conditions that give rise to disregarding them. A prison system that was vastly more effective in controlling prison populations would threaten to disrupt that balance of power, making it much easier to prosecute laws that would otherwise have been ignored.
Some Moral Recommendations
Given these conflicting considerations, should stun belts be used in our prison system? Let me suggest, on the basis of the preceding considerations, some moral guidelines about what is minimally required in this area.
Controlling Production
It is often argued that it is impossible in the United States to control handguns because there are simply so many unregistered guns already out there that it would be impossible to register or confiscate all of them, or even the vast majority of them. This is not the case, however, with stun belts. At present, the number of such belts is comparatively small and the manufacturers few. This is the moment to act to require that:
These two conditions offer the possibility that stun belts would not be available to the general public.
Restricting Export
Controlling production in this way might also make it possible to retard the export of such belts to countries where they would be routinely used for torture. This would not completely prevent such belts from eventually finding their way into such hands, but it would at least not permit the United States as a country or its individual businesses to encourage and profit from such eventualities.
Recording Usage
Law enforcement agencies typically require a report whenever a gun is discharged by a police officer on duty. Stun belts should be treated in the same fashion. Specifically, two conditions should be met:
These two conditions would serve to make the administration of a shock a legally more significant event.
Restricting Usage
Stun belts offer those who control them a tremendous amount of power over those who wear them. Their usage should be confined to those situations in which there is a significant threat to the safety of others and where that threat cannot be contained in other, less onerous ways. This means that they should not be used, for example, as a way of controlling low security prisoners on a chain gang, but that they are quite justified in controlling a violent criminal being taken for a medical exam.
Concluding Philosophical Reflections
There is a deep ambiguity that runs throughout our understanding of punishment: should punishment inflict pain or should it cause injury? Stun belts and capital punishment by lethal injection represent the two extremes of this view.(8) Stun belts claim to offer pain without injury; execution by lethal injection, on the other hand, is the ultimate painless injury. Imprisonment often seems to cause neither pain nor injury. Prisoners, in the popular perception, simply emerges from prison more hardened--literally, with harder muscles; figuratively, with blunted sensibilities. Often time is prison is seen simply as moving from one chapter of a gang into another. According to the popular image, prisoners work out so that they will be physically more intimidating upon their release, watch television, and eat food paid for by taxpayers. It’s a bit like putting a child in time out—but putting him in a toy store for the duration of the time out.
Part of the appeal of stun belts is, I suspect, rooted in the public’s desire to see criminals suffer. It seems morally impermissible to cause them injury (except in the case of capital punishment), so we look for ways of causing pain without apparent injury. Moreover, it seems impermissible to simply cause them pain—after all, that’s just torture. Therefore, there has to be an excuse to cause them pain. The combination of the stun belt and the need for discipline provides the perfect opportunity for society to condone inflicting pain on prisoners.