Lifers and VR

Most of the time when I read about VR, it's in the context of videogaming in one way or another. That's all well and good but seems like a fairly limited scope if it's going to be the Next Great Technology (which is another reason AR has always seemed more interesting to me).

However, this Marshall Project piece on A View of Tomorrow that covers how Virtual Reality is being used inside of correctional facilities is a new and compelling implementation of the tech. Imagine being imprisoned for any significant amount of time - 10, 20, 40 years - and how much the world would have changed during that time. The ability to acclimate to the outside world would be jarring, at best, once you've finally earned your freedom.

Correctional facilities in Philadelphia and Colorado are trying out new experimental programs in which they help prisoners ready themselves for that release by immersing them in a virtual world before they experience it. Something as simple as walking around the halfway house they'll be staying in or going to the grocery store with self-checkout kiosks can be a huge help on learning how to simply exist.

There's plenty of discourse to be had around prisons in general that shouldn't be washed over just because some are using some new fangled technology. On the whole, they're inhumane, dangerous and often do nothing to rehabilitate their inhabitants. It's an awful scenario and this experiment shouldn't be thought of as a softening of that experience but at least some are making an effort to help the incarcerated stay away once they are released.