Tucker Telephone

{{Short description|Torture device}}

The Tucker Telephone is a torture device designed using parts from a crank telephone. The electric generator of the telephone is wired in sequence to two dry cell batteries so that the instrument can be used to administer electric shocks to a person. The Tucker Telephone was invented by A. E. Rollins,{{cite book |chapter=Murton T. Prison doctors |editor-last=Visscher |editor-first=M B |title=Humanistic Perspectives in Medical Ethics |location=Buffalo, NY |publisher=Prometheus Books |date=1972 |pages=248–249}} the resident physician at the Tucker State Prison Farm, Arkansas, in the 1960s.

At the Tucker State Prison Farm, an inmate would be taken to the "hospital room", where he was most likely restrained to an examining table and two wires would be applied to the prisoner. The ground wire was wrapped around the big toe and the "hot wire" (the wire that administers the current of electricity) would be applied to the other toe. {{cite book |first=James |last=Inciardi |title=Criminal Justice |edition=7th |publisher=McGraw-Hill |date=2005}} The torture device was also used on genitalia.{{cite web|last=Frankel|first=David|url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1980/6/27/cool-hand-bob-ptwentieth-century-fox/|title=Cool Hand Bob|newspaper=Harvard Crimson|place=Cambridge, Massachusetts|date=1980-06-27|accessdate=2023-02-19}} The crank on the phone would then be turned, and an electric current would shoot into the prisoner's body. Continuing with the telephone euphemisms, 'long-distance calls' referred to several such charges, just before the point of losing consciousness. Often the victim would experience detrimental effects, mainly permanent organ damage and mental health problems. Its use was substantiated until 1968.{{cite book |first=James |last=Inciardi |title=Criminal Justice |edition=7th |publisher=McGraw-Hill |date=2005}}

There are reports from American Vietnam War veterans that field phones were converted into Tucker Telephones that were used to torture Viet Cong prisoners.{{cite book|authorlink=Darius Rejali |last=Rejali |first=Darius M.|title=Torture and Democracy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L8QLvrX-iL0C&q=tucker+telephone+in+vietnam&pg=PA191|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2007|pages= 191–92|isbn=978-0-691-11422-4}}

A version of the device is used on a prisoner in the Robert Redford film Brubaker.

A 1974 report by Seth B. Goldsmith, SCD, noted, "The Tucker telephone not only shocked the toes of the allegedly uncooperative and incorrigible prison-farm inmates of the Arkansas penal system, but it shocked the consciousness of the nation and awakened it to the atrocious conditions inside prisons."{{cite journal |pmc=1434688|year=1974|last1=Goldsmith|first1=S. B.|title=The status of prison health care. A review of the literature|journal=Public Health Reports|volume=89|issue=6|pages=569–575|pmid=4218907}}