From Vegetative Shutdown to Legal Cynicism: A Theoretical Model of the Cost of Institutional Shock to Human Capital Due to Pre-Trial Detention

Abstract This paper introduces an interdisciplinary theoretical framework within prevention economics to conceptualize and quantify the hidden, long-term socio-economic costs of unjustified criminal prosecution and pre-trial detention. Traditional neoinstitutional evaluations of judicial systems focus heavily on explicit transaction costs and direct budgetary allocations. This study bridges the gap by shifting the analytical focus toward delayed external negative externalities forced upon citizens and civil society. Using official judicial statistics from Turkey as an empirical marker of institutional imbalance (where up to 35% of court cases result in acquittals and 15% of subsequently acquitted individuals undergo pre-trial detention), the author models how aggressive state intervention operates as an acute institutional shock to human capital. The paper formalizes a comprehensive individual cost cascade spanning three interconnected trajectories: Biomedical Trajectory: Grounded in Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory and Bruce McEwen’s concept of allostatic load, it maps how an individual's encounter with overwhelming state pressure activates a dorsal vagal response (systemic freeze and powerlessness). In the absence of safe co-regulation, this shock trauma becomes chronified, leading to persistent neuroendocrine wear, systemic neuroinflammation, and clinically defined disorders under ICD-10/11 and DSM-5 (e. g. , PTSD and Complex PTSD). Socio-structural Trajectory: It incorporates the immediate destruction of productive ties, loss of labor potential, business liquidation, and subsequent labor market discrimination. Cognitive-behavioral Trajectory: Drawing on Tom Tyler’s procedural justice and Robert Sampson’s legal cynicism frameworks, it demonstrates how institutional aggression fosters a stable cognitive matrix of "system avoidance, " forcing economic agents to distance themselves from state structures and migrate into the informal economy. Finally, the study adapts the classical Cost-of-Illness (COI) methodology from public health economics to propose a mathematical model that integrates direct medical costs (DC₌₄₃₈₂₀₋), individual income losses (IC₈₍₃), and intangible damage quantified via the Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALY/YLD) index. Developed as a rigorous theoretical matrix, this work establishes a baseline methodology for subsequent applied longitudinal econometric and clinical research aimed at preserving aggregate human capital and optimizing institutional efficiency. Keywords: Prevention Economics, Institutional Shock, Pre-Trial Detention, Polyvagal Theory, Allostatic Load, Legal Cynicism, Cost-of-Illness (COI), Human Capital, DALY. This paper is also avaliable on Russian. For Russian version, please contact author.