Utilization Of Virtual Reality In The Prison System To Reduce The Rate Of Violence

A third of young offenders and adults in Northern Ireland re-offend with a year of being released from police custody. With such a high figure it would make sense to explore other means of reducing this rate not only benifiting communities but also reducing the cost to the tax payer. Through the use of Virtual Reality it could help provide education on life skills that could help to de-escalate potentially violent or stressful confrontations in the outside world and assist offenders with job skills for future work.

How does it work?

Firstly before we can get into how it works we should know how and where VR came about. The intital idea was presented in the 1930's as the first flight simulator was invented to train pilots. 1965 saw advancements in technlogoy and therefore a portable vitual world was created through the use of two small television screens, one for each eye, mounted on a helmet which worked to a basic degree as long as it had support from the ceiling it was hung from. The idea was then later improved again by NASA in 1985 and has been constantly improving since with more functions and applications by the day. There are six categories in which VR can be displayed, Desktop displays, head-mounted displays, arm mounted displays, simgle screen displays, surround svreen displays and volumetric displays. Head mounted displays are among te most popular and are becoming widly used on multiple platforms. This form of display makes use of headtracking software which displays and image using a system called 6DoF (six degrees of freedom) which plots your head in terms of your X, Y and Z axis

Is this real life?

Virtual Reality will allow offenders to experience lifes challenges but in a safe environment where they can learn without the fear of making mistakes or creating a stressful situation. Tasks such as doing laundry, using self checkouts and public transport. VR can be applied to real life senarios such as de-escalating a confontation in a bar. This works through VR's ability to "con" our brain. We know what we are seing isn't real but our mind and body cannot help but to react to it as if it was real, but this doesn't come without it's potential negatives. As quoted by Thomas Metzinger, “virtual environments can continue to influence you after you exit VR.

In another study, people who embodied avatars that looked like older versions of themselves were more inclined to save for retirement after they returned to real life. ”This leads on to my next point, what is actually real? VR can have a great physical and pschological influence related to the mind, cognition, metaphysics and epistemology. This is where VR can be both the hero and villan, using the technology for good to help those overcome mental health issuses suchphobias, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorer, persecutory delusions. The negative side effects to your health using VR can vary from dizziness and disorentation to nausea and seizure but I feel this is far from the danger as VR could be used to influence your actions in the real world

Does it work?

"Putting a kid in a corner won't teach them how to be a better person but rather teaches them not to get caught" Dr. Raji WahidyA soft launch in December 2016, ahead of a large-scale campaign set to go live on March 1st 2017 sees the first implication of VR in the Prison system.

In the past VR has proven effective for example, in 1994 Kaiser Permanente, an integrated managed care consortium was one of the first to implement VR and its use was to treat Acrophobia symptoms. After these studies over 90% of patients no longer showed symptoms. To support these positive proven effects of VR further studies were carried out on Military personnel returning from combat in Iraq and Afganistan with PTSD symptoms. Results showed that over 75% no longer showed symptoms following thr use of VR.

Conclusion

In conclusion I believe that the positives of implementing Virual reality in the Prison system greatly outweighs the draw backs. There are clear facts and figures showing that the reoffending rate is greatly reduced after the studies, allowing for smoother reintergration back into society and helping offenders make use of new opertunities in life after incarceration. I Believe it is about teaching offenders, allowing for them to learn new life skills so that they are able to help themselves in future.