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People are tortured primarily to break their will, extract information, intimidate, or coerce, often driven by fear or limited resources rather than mere sadism

. It is utilized by state actors (police, military) and non-state actors (criminals, militants) to destroy a victim’s agency, frequently enabled by organizational impunity. Wikipedia +1

Key reasons and factors for torture include:

• Coercion and Control: Torture is used to force confessions, obtain information, or punish individuals, often within prisons and intelligence apparatuses.
• Intimidation: It acts as a tool to terrorize populations, political opponents, or specific groups into submission.
• Impunity: A lack of legal consequences for perpetrators allows the practice to continue and escalate, which is considered a primary cause for its perpetuation.
• Psychological and Physical Power: It aims to destroy a person’s personality and willpower.
• “Enhanced” Interrogation: Techniques like waterboarding or sexual abuse are sometimes falsely justified as legal methods for interrogation or control. 
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  Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe physical or mental pain
  . While it is absolutely prohibited under international law, it persists globally for several strategic, judicial, and psychological reasons. Wikipedia +3
  
  Common Reasons for Torture
  Obtaining Information or Confessions: Governments or armed groups use torture to extract intelligence or force individuals to sign “confessions”. Research by Amnesty Internationalindicates these confessions are often false, as victims will say anything to stop the pain.
  Punishment: It is frequently used as a form of extrajudicial punishment for perceived crimes or as a way to retaliate against political or social opponents.
  Intimidation and Control: Torture is a tool for social and political control. By targeting specific individuals, regimes aim to spread fear throughout a community and suppress dissent or activism.
  Discrimination: People are often targeted based on their identity, including their religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
  Breaking Personal Autonomy: One psychological goal is to dismantle a person’s identity and humanity, creating a state of “learned helplessness” so they are no longer able to resist authority. Wikipedia +9
  
  Why Perpetrators Do It
  Ideology and Duty: Many torturers believe they are serving a higher cause, such as protecting the state or fighting terrorism, which they use to justify their actions.
  Obedience and Pressure: Psychological studies like Milgram’s experiment show that ordinary people may inflict pain if ordered by an authority figure or if they feel peer pressure within a specialized unit.
  Dehumanization: Perpetrators often mentally “dehumanize” their victims, viewing them as enemies or threats rather than people, which makes the act of torture psychologically easier to perform.
  Impunity and Systemic Failure: In many regions, torture persists because there is no oversight and perpetrators are never punished. It can also be a “shortcut” in broken judicial systems that rely on confessions rather than evidence. Wikipedia +5
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  Torture as a form of punishment has evolved from a state-sanctioned, public judicial tool into a clandestine instrument used by modern regimes to enforce social control and suppress dissent. While historically it was often a visible part of the legal process, it is now strictly prohibited under international law, yet continues to be used as a method of extrajudicial “discipline”
  . Wikipedia +4
  
  Historical Context: Judicial Punishment
  In many ancient and medieval societies, torture was not just an interrogation tool; it was a codified legal penalty designed to reflect the severity of a crime. Medieval Torture Museum +2
  Lex Talionis (Retaliation): Early legal codes, like the Code of Hammurabi, applied the “eye-for-an-eye” principle literally, where criminals received physical injuries identical to those they inflicted on victims.
  Public Spectacle: Major crimes like treason or heresy often resulted in elaborate, public torturous executions (e.g., breaking on the wheel, drawing and quartering, or burning at the stake). These were intended as theatrical warnings to the community to discourage future offenses.
  Corporal Discipline: For lesser crimes, branding, flogging, or mutilation (like cutting off a hand for theft) served as lifelong physical markers of a person’s guilt and reduced social status. Britannica +4
  
  Modern Use: Extrajudicial and Social Control
  Today, while no longer “legal” in the traditional sense, torture is used for punishment in more insidious ways: 
  Extrajudicial Violence: In regions with weak justice systems, police may apprehend suspects and torture them before releasing them without charge as a form of immediate, unofficial punishment.
  Deterrence of Dissent: Governments often use torture against protesters, activists, or marginalized groups to “punish” political activity and instill fear in the broader community.
  Discrimination: Victims are frequently targeted for their identity (religion, race, or sexual orientation), where the torture acts as a “penalty” for belonging to that group.
  Punishment via Conditions: In some prisons, inhumane treatment—such as prolonged solitary confinement, denial of medical care, or sensory deprivation—is used as a regular form of degradation and punishment for inmates. Amnesty International +4
  
  The Move Toward Psychological Punishment 
  As physical torture became easier to document and harder to justify internationally, some regimes shifted to “white” or psychological torture. This includes methods like constant noise, light exposure, or sleep deprivation, which aim to punish and “break” a person’s identity without leaving visible physical scars. Organizations like Amnesty International work to expose these practices, noting that they often occur in secret “black sites” to maintain deniability. Amnesty International +4
  
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  Extrajudicial punishment is a punishment for an alleged crime or offense which is carried out without legal process or supervision by a court or tribunalthrough a legal proceeding.
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  Extrajudicial punishment is often a feature of politically repressive regimes, but even self-proclaimed or internationally recognized democracies have been known to use extrajudicial punishment under certain circumstances.
  Although the legal use of capital punishment is generally decreasing around the world, individuals or groups deemed threatening—or even simply “undesirable”—to a government may nevertheless be targeted for punishment by a regime or its representatives. Such actions typically happen quickly, with security forces acting on a covert basis, performed in such a way as to avoid a massive public outcry and/or international criticism that would reflect badly on the state. Sometimes, the killers are agents outside the government. Criminal organizations, such as La Cosa Nostra, have reportedly been employed for such a purpose.
  Another possibility is for uniformed security forces to punish a victim, but under circumstances that make it appear as self-defense or suicide. The former can be accomplished by planting recently fired weapons near the body, the latter by fabricating evidence suggesting suicide. In such cases, it can be difficult to prove that the perpetrators acted wrongly. Because of the dangers inherent in armed confrontation, even police or soldiers who might strongly prefer to take an enemy alive may still kill to protect themselves or civilians, and potentially cross the line into extrajudicial murder.
  A forced disappearance (or enforced disappearance) occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person’s fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law.^[1]
  Extrajudicial punishment may be planned and carried out by a particular branch of a state, without informing other branches, or even without having been ordered to commit such acts. Other branches sometimes tacitly approve of the punishment after the fact. They can also genuinely disagree with it, depending on the circumstances, especially when complex intragovernmental or internal policy struggles also exist within a state’s policymaking apparatus.
  In times of war, natural disaster, societal collapse, or in the absence of an established system of criminal justice, there may be increased incidences of extrajudicial punishment. In such circumstances, police or military personnel may be unofficially authorised to severely punish individuals involved in looting, rioting and other violent acts, especially if caught in flagrante delicto. This position is sometimes itself corrupted, resulting in the death of merely inconvenient persons, that is, relative innocents who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.