The Truth Machines: Policing, Violence, and Scientific Interrogations in India

Abstract

ABSTRACTHow do police get witnesses and criminal defendants to tell the truth? And in what ways do the truth‐seeking activities of law enforcement create and remake the identity of the state? These questions lie at the heart of Jinee Lokaneeta's fine book, The Truth Machines. For anthropologists of law and politics, the book offers a lens into the ways that nations try to prevent the torture of citizens, paradoxically by promoting a different kind of torture. It is a story of how state officials move torture from dusty police interrogation rooms into futuristic forensic laboratories and hospitals.