Azkaban Prison is a fairly central feature of Harry Potter, and it's actually one of my favorite things about Rowling's world. It suggests a very dark, gritty underbelly to all of the lighter Scooby Doo-style adventure that's the central theme of the books. But this does raise some troubling questions.
“I would’ve gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”
It's explicitly stated many times that Azkaban is a terrifyingly torturous place where roaming apparitions act as guards and ensure there is no sense of happiness and drive prisoners insane in a matter of weeks.
Now, the concept of a prison using torture is one thing, and I'm not going to argue that it's inappropriate in a youth-demographic book. As I said, I like that Rowling includes these touches of harshness. My problem is where is the message that constantly torturing prisoners as a matter of policy is somehow wrong?
Throughout the Potter mythos, characters are regularly sent to Azkaban, both good and bad. And while other characters often have misgivings when they must imprison a friend or loved one, never is it brought up that maybe it's wrong to drive people insane as a security measure.
This was addressed by Rowling in a post-Deathly Hollows web chat interview, where she stated that after Voldemort and his minions were defeated Azkaban was reformed to no longer use Dementors....because they were corrupt. She never addresses that their entire purpose as jailors was to constantly torture the inmates.
This is baffling for two reasons:
One, while the muggle populace is unaware of the wizard world, the wizard world is very much aware of muggles. This means that all the otherwise vigilant and moral characters aren't ignorant to the idea that torture is widely held to be cruel and unusual. They know that muggles mostly did away with torture in their correctional institutions, yet they aren't really bothered that with the power of magic at their disposal the best security measure wizards have come up with is waterboarding phantoms (incidentally, Waterboarding Phantoms would make a killer band name).
Two, not everyone who goes to Azkaban stays there, and I'm not just talking about the people who escape. Not only are multiple characters released after being proven innocent or making a deal with the Ministry of Magic, but according to the Harry Potter wiki, multiple wizards were sentence to six month terms.
This suggests wizards who commit misdemeanor offenses are sent to a prison filled with lunatic lifers where people routinely "go mad within weeks." That's the equivalent of our legal system catching someone with a gram of weed and sending them to an unregistered CIA black prison. Which seems a bit harsh, even for the English.
I have never thought about Azkaban in this way before. You're right. It is f'd up to torture people as a security measure. Now that you brought it up, I wonder what the magical community does when a wizarding person breaks a muggle law. Do they even care about muggle laws? They mention that Serious Black was in the muggle papers... Are there some muggles that work with the wizards, aside from the mayor? hmm. Things to ponder...
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