There are cases, both documented and alleged, that involve the usage of torture by members of the United States government, military, law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, healthcare services, and other public organizations both in and out of the country.

Torture is illegal in the United States. The United States came under scrutiny for controversial practices, both from foreign and domestic sources, following the Military Commissions Act of 2006.The Military Commissions Act of 2006: A Short Primer Retrieved 13 February 2025

After the U.S. dismissed United Nations concerns about torture in 2006, one UK judge observed 'America's idea of what is torture ... does not appear to coincide with that of most civilized nations'.

While the term "torture" has a variety of definitions and cultural contexts, this article addresses only those practices qualifying as torture under the definition of that term articulated in the codified law (primarily statutory) and case law of the United States.See article on precising definition.

The Human Rights Measurement Initiative gives the U.S. a score of 2.7 out of 10 for the right to freedom from torture and ill-treatment."Right to freedom from torture and ill-treatment." HRMI Rights Tracker. Retrieved 2026-08-27.

Legislation, regulation, and treaties regarding torture

There is no federal criminal statute against torture specifically within the U.S.:paragraph 13 There is a federal criminal statute against committing torture outside the U.S. However, according to the Committee Against Torture, "despite the occurrence of cases of extraterritorial torture of detainees, no prosecutions have been initiated under the extraterritorial criminal torture statute":paragraph 13 There is a federal criminal statute against assault and battery within the U.S., and torture would fall under this, but torture is more than mere assault and battery. There is also a federal law defining torture. There are state laws outlawing torture. Torture is also a violation of international law per the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT). It is a "crime against humanity", and this has "universal jurisdiction". However, outside of the "universal jurisdiction" potential avenue for prosecution (i.e. some other country prosecutes acts of torture committed by the U.S. Government), there is no practical method of enforcement for torture committed by the U.S. as a violation of international law. This is because the U.S. is a signatory of the Rome Statute and is not party to the International Criminal Court. The UN Security Council (UNSC) can recommend cases to the ICC, but the U.S. can, as one of the five permanent members of the UNSC, veto the recommendation.

Prohibition under domestic law

Bill of Rights

Torture as a punishment falls under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The text of the Amendment states that: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. The U.S. Supreme Court has held since at least the 1890s that punishments which involved torture are forbidden under the Eighth Amendment.In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436, 447 (1890) ("Punishments are cruel when they involve torture or a lingering death.").

18 U.S.C. § 2340 (the "Torture Act")

An act of torture committed outside the United States by a U.S. national or a non-U.S. national who is present in the United States is punishable under . The definition of torture used is as follows:

Military Commissions Act of 2006

In October 2006, the United States enacted the Military Commissions Act of 2006, authorizing the President to conduct military tribunals of enemy combatants and to hold them indefinitely without judicial review under the terms of habeas corpus. Testimony coerced through humiliating or degrading treatment would be admissible in the tribunals. Amnesty International and others have criticized the Act for approving a system that uses torture, destroying the mechanisms for judicial review created by Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, and creating a parallel legal system below international standards.Amnesty International, Rubber stamping violations in the "war on terror": Congress fails human rights , 27 September 2006.Martin Scheinin, U.N. Expert on Human Rights and Counterterrorism Concerned that Military Commissions Act is Now Law in United States, 27 October 2006, UN Press ReleaseJeremy Waldron, The Rule against Torture as a Legal Archetype , Charney Lecture, 2006 Part of the act was an amendment that retroactively rewrote the War Crimes Act, effectively making policymakers (i.e., politicians and military leaders), and those applying policy (i.e., Central Intelligence Agency interrogators and U.S. soldiers), no longer subject to legal prosecution under U.S. law for what, before the amendment, was defined as a war crime, such as torture.No longer punishable under U.S. law Thoughts on the "Bringing Terrorists to Justice Act of 2006" John Dean, FindLaw, September 22, 2006 The Military Commissions Act of 2006: A Short Primer - Part Two of a Two-Part Series By Joanne Mariner, FindLaw, October 25, 2006 Why The Military Commissions Act is No Moderate Compromise By Michael C. Dorf, FindLaw, October 11, 2006 Because of that, critics describe the MCA as an amnesty law for crimes committed during the war on terror.Pushing Back on Detainee Act by Michael Ratner is president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, The Nation, October 4, 2006Military Commissions Act of 2006 Why The Military Commissions Act is No Moderate Compromise By Michael C. Dorf, FindLaw, October 11, 2006 The CIA, the MCA, and Detainee Abuse By Joanne Mariner, FindLaw, November 8, 2006 Europe's Investigations of the CIA's Crimes By Joanne Mariner, FindLaw, February 20, 2007

The John McCain Charade by Robert Kuttner, The Boston Globe, October 1, 2006 Republican Torture Laws Will Live in History By Larisa Alexandrovna, AlterNet, October 2, 2006.

U.S. Army Field Manuals

In late 2006, the military issued updated U.S. Army Field Manuals on intelligence collection (FM 2-22.3. Human Intelligence Collector Operations, September 2006) and counterinsurgency (FM 3-24. Counterinsurgency, December 2006). Both manuals reiterated that "no person in the custody or under the control of DOD, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, in accordance with and as defined in U.S. law."FM 2-22.3. Human Intelligence Collector Operations, 6 September 2006, p. 5-20. Specific techniques prohibited in the intelligence collection manual include: Forcing the detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; Hooding, that is, placing hoods or sacks over the head of a detainee; using duct tape over the eyes; Applying beatings, electric shock, burns, or other forms of physical pain; Waterboarding; Using military working dogs; Inducing hypothermia or heat injury; Conducting mock executions; Depriving the detainee of necessary food, water, sleep, or medical care.FM 2-22.3. Human Intelligence Collector Operations, 6 September 2006, p. 5-21.

Prohibition under international law

Torture in all forms is banned by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which the United States participated in drafting. The United States is a party to the following international treaties that prohibits torture, such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions (signed 1949; ratified 1955), the American Convention on Human Rights (signed 1977), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (signed 1977; ratified 1992), and the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (signed 1988; ratified 1994). It has neither signed nor ratified the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture. International law defines torture during an armed conflict as a war crime. It also mandates that any person involved in ordering, allowing, and even insufficiently preventing and prosecuting war crimes is criminally liable under the command responsibility doctrine.

Historical practices of torture

Slavery

People living as slaves were regulated both in their service and when walking in public by legally authorized violence. On large plantations, slave overseers were authorized to whip and brutalize noncompliant slaves. Slave codes authorized, indemnified or even required the use of violence and were long criticized by abolitionists for their brutality. Slaves as well as free Blacks were regulated by the Black Codes, and had their movements regulated by patrollers and slave catchers, conscripted from the white population, who were allowed to use summary punishment against escapees, which included maiming or killing them.

Lynching

Lynching was a public act of murder, torture, and mutilation carried out by crowds, primarily against African Americans. A form of mob violence and social control, usually involving (but by no means restricted to) the illegal hanging and burning of suspected criminals, lynch law cast its pall over the Southern United States from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. Victims were usually black men, often accused of acting uppity (being insolent) towards, assaulting, having sex with, or raping white people.

The documented murders of 4,743 people who were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968 were not often publicized. It is likely that many more unrecorded lynchings occurred during and after this period which influenced The Great Migration of 6.5 million African Americans away from southern states. A 1970s lynching site found in Noxubee County, Mississippi, a location central to regional mob violence, belies the continuation of lynching as a torture method.

Most lynchings were inspired by unsolved crime, racism, and innuendo. Three-and-a-half thousand of its victims were African Americans. Lynchings took place in every state except four, but were concentrated in the Cotton Belt. Forms of violence and torture also included genital mutilation, strangulation, maiming and the severing of limbs. Both police and lawmakers, and later federal agents, were frequently complicit in lynching while affiliated with Ku Klux Klan groups, releasing prisoners to lynch crowds and/or refusing to prosecute the participants in a public act of murder. Despite numerous attempts to do so, federal anti-lynching legislation was consistently defeated.Robin D.G. Kelley, "'Slangin' Rocks ... Palestinian Style,'" chapter 1 of Police Brutality, Jill Nelson (ed.), 2000. In 2022, lynching became recognized as a federal hate crime in the United States.

"Third degree" The use of "third degree interrogation" techniques in order to compel confession, ranging from "psychological duress such as prolonged confinement to extreme violence and torture", was widespread and considered acceptable in early American policing. In 1910 the direct application of physical violence in order to force a confession became a media issue and some courts began to deny obviously compelled confessions. In response to this, "covert third degree torture" became popular, since it left no signs of physical abuse. The publication of the Wickersham Commission's "Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement" in 1931 highlighted the widespread use of covert third degree torture by the police to force confessions, and led to a subsequent decline in its use over the 1930s and 1940s.

World War II During World War II, the U.S. military interrogated high-level Nazis at a secret camp, "P. O. Box 1142," outside Washington, D.C. The interrogators did not use physical torture, but did use psychological tricks, like threatening to turn the prisoner over to the Soviets.