Coercive behavior modification on prisoners constitutes a form of state power over mind

Evidence

With so many behavior-modification programs aimed at involuntary populations in state prisons and mental institutions, the senators recognized that the means of behavioral modification had to be reckoned with as a form of state power and questioned the government’s constitutional right to “control” citizens’ behavior and mentation. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1017

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames behavior modification as state power, an early definitional move connecting behavioral tech to constitutional limits.
• QUESTION: Why did the subcommittee distinguish mentation from behavior, and where does surveillance capital’s capture of both fit in that constitutional logic?
• XREF: connects to: Contemporary power struggles now turn on engineered behavior modification, not class relations — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 969; The CIA reinterpreted Chinese brainwashing as Skinnerian operant conditioning on unpredictable reinforcement schedules. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1009; Penal power shifted its target from the body to the mind — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 162 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Penal power shifted its target from the body to the mind #corroborates (0.90) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 162
• Controlling a person’s thinking through education can substitute for coercion. #complicates (0.85) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 867
• Psychological isolation rather than physical locks is the main method of coercion #expands (0.82)
• Ideological logic coerces the mind as violently as outside power does #corroborates (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1065