action against crime or even support for torture against criminals can facilitate its use. Once a torture program is begun, it is difficult or impossible to prevent it from escalating to more severe techniques and expanding to larger groups of victims, beyond what is originally intended or desired by decision-makers. Escalation of torture is especially difficult to contain in counterinsurgency operations. Torture and specific techniques spread between different countries, especially by soldiers returning home from overseas wars, although this process is poorly understood. Purpose Punishment The use of torture for punishment dates back to antiquity, and is still employed in the 21st century. A common practice in countries with dysfunctional justice systems or overcrowded prisons is for police to apprehend suspects, torture them, and release them without a charge. Such torture could be performed in a police station, the victim's home, or a public place. In South Africa, the police have been observed handing suspects over to vigilantes to be tortured. This type of extrajudicial violence is often carried out in public to deter others. It discriminatorily targets minorities and marginalized groups and may be supported by the public, especially if people do not trust the official justice system. The classification of judicial corporal punishment as torture is internationally controversial, although it is explicitly prohibited under the Geneva Conventions. Some authors, such as John D. Bessler, argue that capital punishment is inherently a form of torture carried out for punishment. Executions may be carried out in brutal ways, such as stoning, death by burning, or dismemberment. The psychological harm of capital punishment is sometimes considered a form of psychological torture. Others do not consider corporal punishment with a fixed penalty to be torture, as it does not seek to break the victim's will. Deterrence Torture may also be used indiscriminately to terrorize people other than the direct victim or to deter opposition to the government. In the United States, torture was used to deter slaves from escaping or rebelling. Some defenders of judicial torture prior to its abolition saw it as a useful means of deterring crime; reformers argued that because torture was carried out in secret, it could not be an effective deterrent. In the twentieth century, well-known examples include the Khmer Rouge and anti-communist regimes in Latin America, who tortured and murdered their victims as part of forced disappearance. Regimes that are otherwise weak are more likely to