Virtual Reality: Prospective Catalyst for Restorative Justice

A 2018 U.S. Department of Justice report assessing data from 30 states found that 83% of individuals released from state prisons in 2005 were rearrested within nine years.* When a revolving door ushers five of six individuals back into custody and decimates communities, more effective approaches to criminal justice demand attention. In countries around the world, restorative justice has been emerging as a promising candidate. It generally involves an interactive process in which stakeholders identify and grapple with harms caused by the crime. But many environments lack the resources to invoke its benefits. While restorative justice takes various forms, the crux of each variant involves perspective taking — seeing the harm and its consequences through the eyes of those who experienced it. Cognitive science research suggests that the emerging technology of virtual reality provides an innovative and often especially compelling approach to perspective taking. Embodying an avatar offers the opportunity to experience the world as another and could make virtual perspective-taking encounters a valuable introduction for subsequent in-person encounters or offer a perspective-taking opportunity when in-person encounters are not practical or prudent. This analysis explores how virtual reality could become a catalyst for restorative justice.

*Mariel Alper, Matthew R. Durose, & Joshua Markman, 2018 Update on Prisoner Recidivism: A 9-Year Follow-up Period (2005-2014), U.S. Dept. Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 250975, (2018), https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/18upr9yfup0514.pdf (last visited Feb. 16, 2020).