>>/polru/332377@326678
That's certainly not true. Torture has been an effective investigative action for almost all of human history (and even now, covertly). It is very easy to distinguish truth from self-incrimination, so the only question is what purpose the executioner pursues. Torture was officially abandoned not because it was ineffective, but because it had other effective methods, such as fingerprinting. But even these methods do not prevent the fabrication of cases or self-incrimination without any torture, for example, when the victim is threatened with even longer terms if she does not incriminate herself. Torture is only a means.
When you hit a bully, by the way, but you don't try to kill him, what do you do? You try to influence him with pain and fear. Medieval executioners did the same, for example, in public executions. Not that it was somehow particularly effective, but who said it wasn't effective at all? The fact that many russaks slouched to fight in Chechnya for fear of getting into the zidan or losing their heads is an indisputable fact.