Virtual reality is becoming increasingly capable of producing immersive experiences that can affect users psychologically and emotionally in ways that traditional digital media cannot.

These technologies may offer valuable applications within the criminal justice system. Virtual reality could potentially assist with education, vocational training, therapy, rehabilitation, preparation for release, and other programs intended to help incarcerated people successfully return to society.

However, immersive technology should not become a new method of punishment.

This petition calls for laws and correctional policies prohibiting governments from using virtual reality or comparable immersive technologies to simulate imprisonment, suffering, intimidation, isolation, violence, extreme passage of time, or other punitive experiences as part of a criminal sentence.

Why Establish This Boundary Now?

Technology often develops faster than the laws governing it.

A sufficiently immersive system could eventually allow governments to create artificial environments specifically designed to cause fear, distress, humiliation, isolation, or the subjective experience of prolonged confinement.

Even if such experiences occurred over relatively short periods of physical time, their psychological effects could potentially be significant.

Criminal punishment should remain subject to clear legal standards, judicial oversight, constitutional protections, and public accountability. Governments should not gain an unrestricted ability to manipulate a person's perception and psychological experience as punishment.

Virtual Reality Can Still Have a Positive Role

Prohibiting punitive virtual imprisonment should not mean prohibiting virtual reality within correctional institutions.

VR may have legitimate applications involving:

• education and vocational training;
• mental-health treatment;
• rehabilitation programs;
• practicing everyday skills before release;
• substance-use prevention and treatment;
• preparation for employment;
• therapeutic interventions; and
• voluntary recreational or educational experiences.

These applications should be evaluated through research, professional standards, informed-consent protections, privacy safeguards, and appropriate oversight.

The distinction should be straightforward:

Virtual reality may be used to help rehabilitate people. It should not be designed to psychologically punish them.

Establish Safeguards Before the Technology Arrives

We call on lawmakers and correctional authorities to establish clear protections governing immersive technology in criminal justice.

These protections should:

1. Prohibit sentencing people to simulated or virtual imprisonment as a substitute for, extension of, or addition to legally authorized incarceration.
2. Prohibit immersive experiences intentionally designed to inflict psychological suffering, terror, humiliation, sensory deprivation, simulated violence, or distorted perceptions of time as punishment.
3. Require meaningful informed consent for therapeutic, educational, or experimental VR programs whenever participation is not necessary for an essential correctional function.
4. Protect biometric, behavioral, neurological, and psychological information generated through immersive systems.
5. Require independent ethical and safety review before experimental immersive technologies are deployed on incarcerated populations.
6. Prevent refusal to participate in experimental or rehabilitative VR programs from automatically resulting in additional punishment.
7. Preserve legitimate uses of virtual reality for rehabilitation, education, healthcare, training, and preparation for reentry.
8. Require transparency regarding government contracts, research programs, and correctional policies involving immersive technologies.

Technology Should Not Create New Forms of Cruelty

The criminal justice system will inevitably encounter technologies that previous generations of lawmakers could not have anticipated.

The appropriate response is not to prohibit technological progress.

It is to establish boundaries before new capabilities become normalized without sufficient public debate.

Virtual reality could become an extraordinary tool for education, treatment, and rehabilitation within correctional systems.

It should never become a technological mechanism for manufacturing suffering.

We ask lawmakers and correctional authorities to prohibit punitive virtual imprisonment while establishing responsible standards for beneficial uses of immersive technology within the criminal justice system.