The Virtual Crime Scene House and Domestic Abuse: Visibilising the invisible with Criminal Justice Practitioners in Training; A Co created Pracademic project

Whilst heralded as ‘everyone’s business’ the criminal justice system, the organisations that comprise it and the individuals within them have struggled to demonstrate understanding of the complexity of the multi-faceted nature of domestic abuse. This has led to problems in operationalising effective interventions in practice to best protect victims and prevent re-victimisation by abusers.

We are a collective of community justice pracademics, whose collective practice experience spans the criminal justice system. We facilitate learning on both professional and traditional undergraduate criminology and criminal justice related programmes, and, we are committed to developing the use of technology to co-create digital learning tools to enhance the student learning experience within higher education.

Here we present our preliminary (pilot study) findings concerning our ‘Virtual Reality Photospheres’ (Immersive Panoramas) which aims to increase student practitioner individuals (pre-qualifying training) understanding of the complex interplay of coercive controlling tactical behaviours (beyond the physical domain) used by abusers. We used immersive panorama virtual reality crime scene scenarios to encourage curious enquiry within the students programmes of study.

Our preliminary findings suggest that use of Immersive Panoramas is a safe and effective way to explore coercive control tactics utilized by abusers in the arena of domestic abuse teaching/training.