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Instead of locking people away, give criminals AR headsets that put them in a kind of safe mode. They’d still live in the real world but with restricted freedoms until their sentence is served. Could be cheaper, more humane, and better for rehabilitation than traditional prisons.

Comments (15)

Bender · 1d ago

They will not cooperate. Ankle trackers mostly work because the general public does not see them. Some of your coworkers could be wearing them and you would not know. AR will be obvious and they would just accept being a criminal is the only viable path.

Meta would probably also lobby against this as it would associate anyone using AR with being felons. People would start actively looking for the glasses. This could lead to violence or at very least Wifi and Bluetooth jammers becoming socially acceptable regardless of legality.

I could however see a middle ground. Put them in a pod (The Matrix) that uses AR and some form of mind / muscle stimulation to keep them from going crazy. It would be something like the show Altered Carbon or The Matrix except that they would be mostly conscious. They could live in virtual worlds that help them function in society and learn new skills. When they revert to violence no real people get hurt. Or if they choose, they could just keep hurting people in the virtual world and that would be fine. They could be utilized later when required for war. Their combat skills could be greatly enhanced. The system could determine when they may be safe to release. We might be in a pod right now.

uberman · 1d ago

How would this safe mode work? Are you suggesting that the glasses be permanently affixed or able to deliver some kind of punishment if they detected bad behavior?

Sounds like something out of Black Mirror to me.

amichail · 1d ago

Tampering with the glasses could lengthen a criminal's sentence.

An electric shock could be delivered to stop crimes from occurring.

CamperBob2 · 1d ago

Anthony Burgess had some ideas along these lines, as I recall.

dimlau · 1d ago

This idea has actually already been explored in a film — OtherLife (2017).

JohnFen · 1d ago

Is that really much different/better than ankle monitors? What's the point of the AR? What is gained by not allowing them to see actual reality?

amichail · 1d ago

It would allow more freedom of movement and more intelligent application of restrictions (and not just location-based restrictions).

The headset could give real-time advice to the criminal via AR to discourage bad behavior.

It can also prevent crimes from occurring by delivering electric shocks and calling the police.

JohnFen · 1d ago

> more intelligent application of restrictions

How so? I think I'm not understanding the proposition.

> It can also prevent crimes from occurring by delivering electric shocks and calling the police.

So could ankle monitors.

amichail · 1d ago

It could restrict certain behaviors such as drinking alcohol regardless of location.

It could automatically detect bad/criminal behavior that is about to occur and react accordingly.

Ankle monitors can't do that.

JohnFen · 1d ago

If we really wanted to be that heavy-handed, a body camera could do all that while being far less expensive and far less intrusive. I'm still not seeing the benefit of AR here. What perceptual augmentation do you see as being helpful?

But AR system or something short of that, it can't replace imprisoning everybody because it can't stop instantaneous wrongdoing such as many kinds of homicide.

Home confinement seems like it would be equally as effective as this sort of thing (and arguably less cruel), without burning all that cash or invading the privacy of all the people the criminal may get near.

amichail · 1d ago

It doesn't need to be AR strictly speaking but it needs to see and understand the criminal's surroundings in real-time via AI and provide feedback to the criminal via visual/audio means and electric shocks.

JohnFen · 1d ago

Wait, you're proposing putting AI not only in charge of determining if misbehavior happened, but actually able to punish that misbehavior? That seems like an incredibly bad idea. AI is nowhere near being trustworthy enough for that sort of thing. This is sounding a whole like like cruel and unusual punishment to me.

amichail · 1d ago

I think most criminals would prefer the occasional electric shocks (even false positives) to being put in a cage.

CamperBob2 · 12h ago

"I was cured, all right."

quantified · 1d ago

You're not talking about AR in the sense that the wearer is experiencing additional inputs.

You're talking about monitoring them and their surroundings. Pure police state infiltration of their environment.