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Ken Strutin[/caption] Cognitive distractions, such as texting while driving, and cognitive destruction, such as repetitive brain trauma, are intently studied. Yet, the mental demolition of confinement is largely unmeasured. Computational technology exists that can reveal to the criminal justice system the disabling conditions of a population under chronic psychological assault. The FDA has approved ImPACT, a computerized assessment to evaluate the cognitive effects of concussive injuries. And certain psychiatric disorders can now be studied with machine learning. See Sarah K Fineberg et al., “Computational Psychiatry in Borderline Personality Disorder,” 4(1) Current Behav. Neuroscience Rep. 31 (March 2017). So, applications exist to gauge the mental trauma of confinement; to measure individual cognitive infringement; and to create a computational evaluation of post-conviction justice.
Prison Think
Confinement consumes the flesh, confiscates reason, and promotes mental estrangement. And without counsel, the pleas of discarded people cannot be heard over the thrum of the suffering and the dying. See Ken Strutin, “Prison Affected People: Punished to the Margins of Life,” LLRX, Dec. 30, 2016. "Prison think" is the descent of the human mind into inhuman conditions. For the poor and the punished, this means that "prison" does the thinking and the lawyering. When the dust settles on their transcripts, the solitary mind is their only counsel. But neuroscience can measure the incarcerative effect on the isolated brain, build a consensus around it, and recognize the de facto incapacity for self-representation. To begin, cognitive assessments are reshaping the classifications of juvenile minds and penality. See Dana Goldstein in “Who’s a Kid?,” The Marshall Project, Oct. 27, 2016. Indeed, they have been a driver behind the Supreme Court's categorical exemptions from the death penalty, life without parole and the movement away from solitary confinement. See Tanya Renn and Christopher Veeh, “Untreated Traumatic Brain Injury Keeps Youth in Juvenile Justice System,” Juv. Just. Infor. Exch., June 26, 2017. Picking up where the Stanford Prison Experiment and current studies have left off, neuro-technology can reveal that imprisonment is cerebral punishment. Prison walls concentrate an unremitting psychic ordeal: "About 1 in 7 state and federal prisoners (14 percent) and 1 in 4 jail inmates (26 percent) reported experiences that met the threshold for serious psychological distress (SPD) … ." Jennifer Bronson, Indicators of Mental Health Problems Reported by Prisoners and Jail Inmates, 2011-2012 (BJS 2017). Indeed, studies of the imprisoned show on average that more than 80 percent suffered from brain trauma compared with six percent for the general population. See Erika Hayasaki, “Teaching Prison Inmates About Their Own Brain Trauma Could Help Them Rehabilitate,” Newsweek, June 29, 2016. And yet, this condition remains unlinked to their ability to litigate without counsel. Accessible computer technology can go further than surveys to portray the cognitive functioning of an individual incarcerated. For instance, in an excessive force lawsuit, Davis v. Moroney, 857 F.3d 748, 752 (7th Cir. 2017), Judge Richard Posner used an online text evaluator to assess the pro se petitioner's ability to read the lower court's orders: