Torture is pervasive in the justice system in Saudi Arabia. In part, this is because essential legal safeguards necessary to prevent torture are missing. Instead torture is institutionalized in the unfettered power of the police, the denial of fundamental legal rights to prisoners, and the secrecy that cloaks the justice system. A second major problem is that Saudi Arabian courts continue to impose sentences like flogging or amputation that are considered a form of torture, ill-treatment or cruelty under international human rights laws. Saudi Arabian courts use corporal punishment for a wide range of offences, including possession of alcohol and violations of codes of sexual conduct.
Some proponents justify judicial corporal punishment on cultural or religious grounds.
But culture is not static and traditions are constantly being reshaped by new realities and debates. Punishments that may have been widely accepted in the past, today are seen to be cruel and degrading. Saudi Arabia is one of only 14 countries where Amnesty International has documented cases of judicial floggings since 1997 and one of only seven countries where courts have ordered amputations. Social restrictions on women's activities and the violent enforcement of these restrictions by the mutawa'een may curtail women's contacts outside their households. This makes it harder for women to seek justice if they are abused and harder for them to defend themselves if they are accused of a crime.