Physical abuse of prisoners includes illicit beating and hitting of prisoners, unlawful corporal punishment, stress positions, and excessive or prolonged physical restraining. According to the New York Times, along with physical abuse, prisoners are being thrown into jail for mental illnesses that they obtain and not being treated for them. This causes their issues to get worse and in some cases never get better. Also, relating to physical abuse the mentally ill can be thrown into restrained areas for a long amount of time because of their mental condition, this means that these mentally ill people do not have the resources to get better in the jail. This is also caused by overpopulation in jails. Penal Reform International claims, that overcrowding in the main source of poor jail conditions globally. This caused overcrowding and understaffing: one of the reasons why there can sometimes be 2-3 people in the same jail cell for a long period of time. This causes a lack of privacy and because the jails are so overcrowded some minor cases are cut from the justice system altogether. According to the Marshall Plan, there are also many gangs that are formed in different prisons which cause chaos and force the jail to go through many lockdowns which are a vulnerable time for the prison guards especially when they are understaffed. It also says that the prisoners and the prison guards have to be safe, which caused the guards to be defensive and sometimes abusive.
Psychological abuse of prisoners can include verbal abuse, sleep deprivation, white noise, pointless/absurd or humiliating instructions, recurrent exhaustive inspections and shakedowns, arbitrary strip searches, and denuding actions. According to Reflexions, prison can alter people's bodily dimensions, their emotional wellbeing, and possibly change their perception for an extended amount of time. It also claims that not only does the prison environment make mental disorders worst but also may cause them. The type of prison environment can be cruel and if the prisoner does not have the mental, emotional, and physical willpower they will struggle very greatly.
White noise
The endless playing of random static with no pattern; this can cause extreme discomfort and disorientation.
Verbal abuse
Prisoners may be subject to taunting, heckling, profanity, and malicious lies by prison authorities. Guards and other authorities may use verbal abuse as a means of frightening or demoralizing prisoners to make them more compliant, or simply out of sadism.
Enablement of sexual violence
Prisoners are sometimes intentionally housed with inmates known to have raped other prisoners, or protection from known rapists may be purposely withheld from the prisoners. These practices create a very high incidence of rape in US prisons, which was the topic of the 2001 report No Escape from Human Rights Watch.
Sexual abuse of prisoners can include excessive vaginal or rectal contraband searches or other internal checks, forced sexual intercourse, forced insertion of objects into vagina or rectum, arbitrary strip searches, and other forms of forced denudation.
Strip searches
The experience of a forced strip search can be experienced as a traumatic event similarly to that of rape especially by female prisoners. The prevalence of CCTV in prisons and the generally indiscreet nature of strip searches, with often a number of guards observing, can add to the experienced humiliation. Strip searches are often arbitrarily used under various pretences, when the actual ambition is to assert control or to intimidate the subjected prison inmates.
Enemas
Forced enemas are commonly acknowledged as being uncomfortable and degrading for the receiving person. Such a treatment can also be registered as a form of physical abuse as well as sexual abuse, if practiced against the will of the prisoner. This is usually done in order to demonstrate dominance and assert "total control" over detainees. As a consequence of this practice, anal fissures, chronic hemorrhoids and rectal prolapse can occur when administered excessively. Forced enemas have evidentially been used for example at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp by the United States. In certain cases it was administered under the pretence to counter a prisoner's dehydration. Forms of medical justification were employed whenever enemas were in fact used as a coercive tool. Despite the pretext of medical need, it was later admitted in certain cases, that this was in fact untrue. The CIA administered enemas to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Mustafa al-Hawsawi and Mohammed al-Qahtani among others.
Torture
Torture of prisoners includes any act, whether physical or psychological, which is deliberately done to inflict excruciating and agonizing pain upon a person under the actor's custody or physical control for any reason such as extracting information or punishment.
Enhanced interrogation
"Enhanced interrogation" is a euphemism for U.S. torture methods implemented in the War on Terror purportedly needed to extract information from detainees. Examples include use of stress positions, sleep deprivation, starvation, thirst, and sexual humiliation.
