For the first time, the Central California Women’s Facility is using virtual reality to help people in solitary confinement. The first prisoner to engage in the mental escape was Samantha Tovar, who is 2½ years into her 5-year sentence. In the experiment, Samantha was able to see Thailand for the first time. When she first put on the headset she had an aerial view of a cove. Soon after, her view switched to a boat moving fairly fast, with buildings on either side of the water. In the boat was a man with a backpack, and it was as if she was sitting beside him. With accompanying meditative music and narration, the four-minute scene took Samantha across a crowded Thai market, through ancient ruins, on a tuk-tuk (a 3-wheeled rickshaw) and into an elephant bath with her backpacked companion. For Samantha, these vignettes felt real enough to be deserving of a passport stamp. In solitary confinement, the only opportunity incarcerated people typically have to speak with each other is through cell vents or across the yard during recreation. With the virtual reality program, participants in solitary sit inside individual cells the size of phone booths known as “therapeutic modules.” In the 7-day program, participants experience scenes from daily life, as well as some more adventurous ones such as paragliding. Creative Acts, the organization behind the program, seeks to work against the hardened environment of prison as a resource for behavioral change and practical preparation for going home from prison. Participants said the small doses of virtual freedom and exposure to the outside world shifted their behaviors and perceptions more than solitary confinement ever did.
