As the promise of VR spreads, critics assert that prisons are looking for a relatively inexpensive tech solution to a social problem. How well VR works to rehabilitate inmates is unknown since these programs are the first of their kind. Nancy Wolfe, a professor at Rutgers University whose research focuses on mental health issues and the justice system, says the challenges can be worse for people who enter prison as teenagers and leave as adults.
“You don’t realize how much the brain has gone dormant when you put people in an artificial environment that constrains their choices and limits their sensory information,” she said.