I recommend The Administration of Torture by Jaffer and Singh, by torturers documenting their own actions.
Here is a disturbing little video of some cops in a county jail torturing prisoners (some of whom are awaiting trial and have not been found guilty of anything) essentially bragging to the documentary film crew that “this how its done.” Here is a much longer compilation documenting (often from the torturer’s point of view) how torture has become commonplace in American prisons. Keep in mind while watching this that Lonnie Granier, was a correctional officer in one of these prisons and was instrumental in kicking off the atrocities at Abu Ghraib.
Here is a disturbing account of the internal logic of a beating: “It was a labor-intensive job. One fearless car thief, who did not want to confess his crime, was bound to a bed in a basement and beaten with metal rods. Describing the incident years later in the book series SIC, Stoev wrote, “We beat him black and blue, but we were careful not to break his bones. A beating has its own internal logic and psychology like any other human activity. It goes through the following stages: First, the victim feels intense pain and screams. Then he goes limp, his organism gives up, and he is ready to confess anything. He takes the punches without protest and, if he’s still conscious, wonders whether he’ll die now or later…. A beating is hard labor…. It’s a whole art in itself.” Stoev was not completely insensitive to other people’s suffering, though he tried everything possible not to think about it. “In the basement I behaved like a beast,” he admitted ruefully, “but out in the daylight I managed to forget about everything. It was my survival strategy. I existed in two parallel worlds.” It was an existence that was taking its toll on both victims and victimizers.”
Naomi Klein has a chapter on torture in The Shock Doctrine you might find interesting. It describes the methods and (even more chilling) some of the science behind modern techniques quoting from a literature which was, of course, developed by torturers for torturers.
The Lucifer Effect describes the sorts of circumstances under which permit people to give in to the impulse to torture and abuse. So too does Monstering and Standard Operating Procedure and The Language of Empire, Ordinary Men and Torture and Democracy, the last of which describes the move toward techniques that don’t leave marks, so as to evade the scrutiny of those who monitor prisons for evidence of torture.
One would think that given how much is known about the conditions that give rise to torture, there would be much more done to prevent them. But, alas, it is 2009 and we are all still barbarians.