What Constitutes Coercion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

What Constitutes Coercion - Essay Example Legally in the law, coercion is a duress crime. This action is used to force the victim as leverage to act in a desired manner. Coercion involves actual psychological harm, physical injury or pain infliction in order to promote the credibility of threats. This threat of continuous harm may result in the person being coerced to cooperate and remain obedient. Coercion becomes torture when it is extremely applied, for instance, infliction of severe pain in a person until the desired response is got from the victim. Â  Coercion involves various levels. The strongest form of coercion entails killing a victim. Another level of coercion is threatening to take the life of a person unless the person remains obedient. Threats of robbing, beating, or incarcerate makes another level of coercion. Some of the strong forms of coercion include the threat of force, force or even deadly force on people. Government law enforcing agencies such as police operates with various levels of coercion. For instance, threatening to apply force to a criminal in order to get a confession is police work, but actual torture is police misconduct. As a police force, criminals may be compelled to give a testimony and in the process, some threat of force may be used. This remains police work as long as the deadly force is not applied to the victim. Any subsequent torture or force on the victim who has already confessed or not is considered police misconduct. In cases where police successfully retrieve information from a crimi nal by use of force or intimidation, then we can proudly say, the means justifies the end. At that level, coercion is acceptable especially if the case was a matter of national security. However, the level of the acceptable coercion needs to be measured in terms of seriousness to avoid cases where a victim ends up dead in the process of interrogation by a law enforcement agency.