Could You Handle It?: Virtual Experience of Solitary Confinement

The incarceration system in the United States is beyond infamous from the death penalty to the overuse of solitary confinement.  So what is it like to spend 23 hours of your day in a cell measuring 6×9 feet for days, months, or years? Could you handle it?  The Guardian’s first virtual reality experience created in 2016, “6×9: a virtual reality experience of solitary confinement”, delves into these questions. With over 80,000 Americans currently serving their solitary confinement sentences, The Guardian allows viewers to follow the stories of seven people and their solitary experiences ranging from one to eight years.

In order to be part of the experience, the viewer is given several options.  The virtual reality 360-degree video can be viewed through a VR headset, a cardboard viewer, or simply through a smartphone and headset.  Once you have downloaded the app, The Guardian gives several options of virtual reality experiences from natural landscapes to illustrated stories.

However, 6×9 seemed to be the most intense of these experiences.  The experience began with a black screen and proceeded to project a warning about the intensity of the virtual reality.  Continuing with the black screen, you begin to be bombarded with various sounds through the headset.  One inmate describes wanting to attack another while the clanking of cell doors fills the background.  Suddenly you are within your 6×9 cell where you will remain for the 9-minute entirety of the virtual reality.  Part of the truth behind this VR experience is the inclusivity of real people who were incarcerated within solitary confinement.  They begin to tell their stories, one after another and overlapping which begins to make the viewer feel overwhelmed.  In order to complete the experience you cannot exit the app or else it starts over, therefore forcing you to remain in 9 minutes of “solitary confinement”.

In collaboration, The Guardian and The Mill created “6×9” in order to raise awareness and create a discussion around solitary confinement especially that of which is extended and how it affects the inmate.  The project chooses to specifically look at the psychological effects that may occur after long-term sensory deprivation by allowing the viewer to experience blurred vision, hallucinations, and a sense of floating.

Screenshot from 6×9. Image courtesy of the Guardian.

The Mill specifically worked with first-person accounts and documentaries as references for the design of the cell and the audio that accompanied it.  In order to make sure that viewers fully understood the effects of solitary, “VR barriers were fully embraced, effects typical after long-term sensory deprivation are played with to mimic a prisoner’s experience of being locked away for 23 hours a day in solitary confinement”.  The project received a Gold British Arrow Craft Award for Best VR/360 and a Silver LIA Award for Virtual Reality, making the vision a success.

After the release of the project on the GuardianVR app and YouTube, The Guardian brought together Terry Kupers, a professor of psychiatry at the Wright Institute at the University of Berkeley and Craig Haney, a social psychologist at the University of Santa Cruz.  The two psychologists then recorded The Story podcast in which they discussed their own research, the temporary and permanent damage that can ensue from isolation, as well as how the project incorporated and displayed the psychological effects of solitary confinement.  Among comparing the virtual reality simulation to their own research of solitary confinement, Kupers and Haney believed that the project gave the viewer the most realistic representation of solitary confinement they could get without ever actually being put into solitary.

In preparation for the launch of The Guardian’s first virtual reality project, the team decided to not only do enough research for the simulation itself but much more in order to give the viewer a complete grasp on solitary confinement and its effects.  After completing the virtual simulation, viewers are able to go into more depth about solitary confinement through alternate articles.  One such article allows viewers to listen to sound clips of seven inmates who share their experiences within solitary confinement. 

Among the stories which were given by the inmates themselves were a series of photographs of each person who told their story.  By viewing the photos, viewers are able to put a face to a story and give humanity back to the former inmates.  Dressed in suits and with jewelry, the formerly incarcerated are able to tell their stories and how being in solitary confinement has affected the people they are today.  The additional articles are able to add to the narrative and increase the viewer’s knowledge on the system within the United States and how it has affected those of which have been incarcerated.

I originally downloaded the virtual reality project because it piqued my interest within criminal justice, however, I didn’t realize how much I was unaware about solitary confinement.  Within the experience, you are bombarded with sounds by other inmates while the reasons behind how one could be placed in solitary are projected around the room.  From yelling too loudly to having too much toilet paper, an inmate can be placed into solitary from a few days up to many years.  However, being placed in “solitary confinement” for 9 minutes through a virtual screen can never amount to or even give the slightest glimpse into what a four-decade sentence like that of Albert Woodfox, the longest-standing solitary confinement prisoner, can do to your mental health.  While solitary confinement is a form of captivity that the United Nations has denounced, it still exists and is still at large in the United States with about 100,000 prisoners serving in solitary.  Through their first VR project, The Guardian was able to shed light on a huge issue within capital punishment and has given viewers a sense of sympathy for inmates who are given no escape to their minds.