Investigating the awareness of virtual and augmented realities as a criminal justice response to the plight of awaiting-trial inmates in Ebonyi State, Nigeria

Despite the reforms in the Nigerian Criminal Justice System (NCJS), the treatment of inmates still falls below standard, with the vast majority of them on awaiting trial. Thus, this study critically examined the feasibility of adopting Virtual and Augmented Realities (VAR) as a framework that could effectively redirect policy and action. Following a cross-sectional survey research design, a sample of 1,498 comprising 623 awaiting-trial inmates, 617 police officers, 145 prison officers, and 113 court officials was drawn from NCJS, Ebonyi State Chapter. Multistage, purposive, snowball and census sampling techniques were used to reach the respondents, who completed the structured questionnaire. The study is founded on the predictions of institutional anomie and regulatory capture theories. In testing the hypotheses, regression results showed that, as the plight of awaiting trial inmates worsens, the need for the adoption of VAR in custodial centres also increased. Contingency table revealed that 260(41.73%) inmates were of the opinion that VAR could help address the challenges and problems, while the Chi-Square statistics indicated that educational qualification of awaiting trial inmates will not influence their views on the introduction of this technology. These findings point to the fact that VAR could be a state-of-the-art technology that holds great promise for correcting maladaptive behaviours among inmates and checkmating procedural laxities in the NCJS for better outcomes in the treatment and reintegration of inmates. We therefore, advocate the amendment of the Nigerian Criminal Justice Act 2015 to include VAR as a curative measure to the plight of awaiting trial inmates.