XR technology and risk assessment: the future of probation training?

Accurate risk assessment and skilled offender management are critical to probation work and are key priorities for HMPPS. Effective training to promote informed and appropriate decision-making is essential in early career probation education. Enabling repeated practice and responsive feedback to decision-making and risk judgments in home visit scenarios is an invaluable learning approach but can be problematic due to time and resource constraints. We describe a study designed to test the use of XR technology (virtual reality and 360 immersive video) as a means to enhance existing probation training. Such technology has been demonstrated to have a range of pedagogic benefits, and it is proposed that technology-enhanced learning has the potential to address some of the practical limitations of existing probation training. It is pertinent, however, that the application of XR technology has a sound evidence base. As such, the current study aims to empirically compare the efficacy of different technology-enhanced learning strategies for improving decision-making and risk judgments in early career probation officers. Early career practitioners were required to describe their decision-making following assessment of a) still images depicting a home visit; b) 360 immersive videos of the same visit; or c) a simulated version of the visit presented in immersive virtual reality. Risk judgments were compared and analysed, and will be used to inform the development of an evidence-based training tool probation risk assessment. Implications for future training and research will be discussed.