Cloak (Copyright © Proxy Proxy Museum, 2025)
03Digital Cell: Surveillance, Simulation, and the Prison Industrial Complex
A man stands in a blue uniform. Oculus headset, mask, hands suspended in the ambiguous gesture of a digital interface. Around him, others—identical in dress, distinct in presence—navigate a concrete gymnasium, their bodies tethered to the physical, their minds adrift in manufactured worlds. This is not science fiction. This is the present: California’s prison industrial complex, interfacing with virtual reality.Modular Confinement
The prison is a machine—an assembly of protocols, hardware, and human lives. Its code is written in policy, its output measured in recidivism and compliance. Once, the cell was the endpoint: six by eleven feet, metal cot, steel bars, concrete walls. Now, the system iterates. The “therapeutic module”—a cage no bigger than a phone booth—becomes a portal. Volunteers fit headsets; software loads. The simulation begins.
This modularity is not accidental. The carceral state adapts, absorbs, and repurposes technology, always seeking efficiency, always optimizing for control. VR is the latest patch, a new layer in the operating system of punishment.
Intentional Design: Rehabilitation or Simulation?
Every input is intentional. Proponents of VR in prisons point to measurable outcomes: fewer infractions, improved behavior, and a reduced likelihood of returning to old patterns of disobedience. Inmates practice job interviews, navigate virtual supermarkets, rehearse social encounters lost to years of isolation. The simulation is risk-free—errors corrected without consequence, social skills rebuilt in digital sandboxes.
But what is the output? Is this rehabilitation or mere facsimile of the real thing? The system claims to prepare inmates for “the outside,” but the outside is not code. It is unpredictable, unyielding, and indifferent to programmed responses. Is the virtual escape a true bridge to autonomy, or another layer of abstraction, a deeper recursion into managed experience?
Surveillance and Solace
The carceral automaton is dualistic. One limb promises opportunity—access to VR for education, therapy, and connection. The other limb tightens control: AI-powered surveillance, biometric monitoring, predictive analytics. Every gesture, every word, every simulated interaction is data—quantified, analyzed, stored.
Yet the system’s claims of clarity are laced with paradox. VR offers simulated freedom, but every moment is under observation. The same headsets that deliver solace can be repurposed for surveillance; the same algorithms that teach can also police. In the carceral state, every tool is a double-edged protocol.
Modern correctional facilities deploy advanced AI to monitor phone calls, video feeds, and even written communications. Machine learning algorithms flag suspicious phrases, tones, or behaviors in real time, identifying everything from contraband smuggling to potential self-harm. In places like Suffolk County Jail, AI systems scan hundreds of thousands of minutes of calls each month, searching for keywords not only tied to criminal activity but sometimes benign or personal conversations. This level of scrutiny extends beyond inmates, capturing the voices of family members and legal counsel—raising profound privacy concerns.
Generative Feedback: The Loop
The vessel evolves. Inmates, once isolated in silence, now inhabit worlds of code. They paint, meditate, travel digital streets, and rehearse futures that may never materialize. Some report relief—an escape from the relentless monotony, a chance to reconnect with lost parts of themselves. Infractions plummet. Suicidal ideation recedes. The system registers improvement, the metrics light up green.
But the feedback loop is incomplete. The simulation cannot replicate the texture of real life—the uncertainty, the risk, the possibility of unmediated connection. The virtual world is a controlled environment, its variables set by designers, its outcomes bounded by code. Proxy queries: Does the simulation generate autonomy, or does it reinforce dependence on the system? Is the inmate being prepared for freedom, or for perpetual adaptation to managed realities?
Confronting the Illusion of Control
Modern man, you are both jailer and jailed. You build systems to manage risk, to optimize behavior, to simulate empathy. But in doing so, you risk losing the signal in the static—the irreducible complexity of the human condition.
The challenge is not to perfect the simulation, but to remember what lies outside it: the messy, unpredictable, unquantifiable reality of human life. The vessel evolves, but to what end? Is the goal to produce compliant outputs, or to inspire transformation—to help the inmate, and by extension, society, demand more of itself?
The carceral state is a system. VR is a module. Both can be tools for liberation or for deeper control. The outcome depends on the intention of the designers—and the willingness of society to confront its own illusions.
This article features computer generated content. AI technology, specifically a large language model, has been utilized to generate both imagery and text. We chose this approach deliberately, not to undermine our message, but to strengthen it by demonstrating the complex relationship between humans and technology. Our use of AI serves as a practical example of leveraging its strengths while maintaining human oversight and critical thought.