Report on the Guantanamo Detainees During Detention: Data from Department of Defense Records

Between Collaboration and Disobedience

“…The US government has long been reluctant to release information on whom they hold captive on Cuba and when finally forced to reveal some data in the wake of the 2004 Rasul v. Bush Supreme Court decision, the resulting list contained nothing but the name, nationality, date and place of birth, as well as the ISN of 759 detainees (Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants [OARDEC] 2006). Denbeaux, Denbeaux, and Gregorek (2006a, 2006b, 2006c) managed to collect more details on the detainees, but their reports are far from complete. Our data set is based on new sources, includes the late arrivals (2006–2008) that were missing in earlier reports, and uses variables that the former analyses did not contain.…”

“…The academic work, on the other hand, focuses almost exclusively on the legal status of Guantánamo (Steyn 2004; Amann 2004; Chesney 2006), sometimes combined with medical (Bloche and Marks 2005; Miles 2007) or geographic–philosophical (Gregory 2006) aspects, but with little quantitative social scientific work being produced to date. So far, the only statistics-based analyses were presented by Denbeaux, Denbeaux, and Gregorek (2006a, 2006b, 2006c) and Denbeaux et al (2012). Denbeaux, Denbeaux, and Gregorek’s 2006 work contributed to the understanding of the composition of the population of detainees, but failed to go further by describing any mechanisms at work.…”