Research VR-training valuable tool to counter ethnic profiling Written on Thursday, November 13, 2025 Ethnic profiling is a sensitive topic in the Netherlands Police. Bas Böing recently received his PhD from Twente University for his thesis entitled ‘Discussing the Elephant in the Room – Addressing Ethnic Profiling with Virtual Reality in Police Training’. In his thesis, Bas discusses the enduring resistance to acknowledging that ethnic profiling exists, and explains how virtual reality training on this topic can contribute to a change in culture within the police. ‘The discussion after the training – that’s where awareness dawns.’ For his PhD project, Bas first explored police officers’ resistance to acknowledging the existence of ethnic profiling. The next step was to find out what was needed to make police officers realise that this is even an issue. ‘Within the Netherlands Police, a large group would maintain “Discrimination exists; it’s an issue in society, but as police officers we are colourblind’, Bas explains. ‘“We’re neutral”, they say. So they don’t acknowledge that there is a problem.’ ‘Then there’s a group who don’t believe the topic is important. They view the attention for ethnic profiling as something that has blown in from the United States. Many of these officers have never had any personal experience of discrimination. And then there’s a third group who are “morally” opposed to reform. They’re afraid that this will undermine the effectiveness of the police.’ ‘And there’s a final group: police officers who acknowledge that the problem exists, but don’t dare mention it. They’re afraid of a negative response from their colleagues. They don’t know how to bring the issue up for discussion. It’s the elephant in the room.’ ❛❛ There are studies that show that experiential training in a VR environment has a much more lasting effect than theoretical learning. Things you’ve actually done and seen stick with you for longer. Advantages of virtual reality One tool that can help to tackle this elephant is virtual reality. ‘VR has huge added benefit, for a variety of reasons. First of all, it’s very appealing: people are always happy to put on a VR headset. And they like the game element, exploring the virtual world they see. Many police officers have a practical mindset. They prefer learning from experience – in this case via virtual reality – rather than from a book.’ ‘In addition, there are studies that show that experiential training in a VR environment has a much more lasting effect than theoretical learning. Things you’ve actually done and seen stick with you for longer. And VR is an inexpensive form of training. The training does cost some money to make, but after that you can upload it to a whole load of headsets and train with it endlessly, without being dependent on times or locations.’ Several scenarios The VR Professional Checks training, aimed at preventing ethnic profiling, now includes several scenarios. ‘They all have the same sort of central theme. You step into a story that is realistic and logical for police officers. Like, you’re carrying out patrols in a realistic streetscape. In each scenario, at a certain point there are choices you have to make – who you’re going to stop and talk to first, for example.’ ‘What we want, in the police, is for officers to be professional in how they act. We want their choice of who to stop to be based on someone’s abnormal or criminal behaviour, so that it’s logical and reasonable for that person to be singled out. Depending on who you stop, you will have another whole range of choices.’ ‘What are you going to do with that person at that point? Ask for their ID, or at a certain point maybe frisk them? Or are you going to carry out further investigations nearby? Or see whether there are people around who might want to testify against the person, or maybe in their favour? All these choices ultimately determine the outcome.’ Shades of grey That is the point where the discussion facilitator takes over. ‘Their role is to help police officers realise that there can be a whole range of perspectives on a single case. And in the whole training there is not just a single “right answer” you can come up with. There are choices that are perfect; in that case you follow the ideal path. But there are also scenarios where people have made a lot of poor choices.’ ‘And in between, there are many shades of grey. That provides food for debate, so that’s what most of the discussion focuses on. The discussion after the training is where awareness dawns. That’s the point when police officers really realise “yes, we all wear the same uniform, but still we are all different in what we see, what we think about it, and how we interpret it.’ ‘It’s often a moment of realisation. So the discussion facilitator then has the task of relating this to the Netherlands Police’s guidelines on how to conduct professional checks (Handelingskader Professioneel Controleren). These guidelines give an overview of offences and circumstances where the police may legitimately carry out checks. What do we think about this situation, and what does our policy say? Then that otherwise abstract policy suddenly becomes much more practical.’ ❛❛ Ethnic profiling is a topic where you can get the basics in order relatively quickly. But you do have to be open to change. And a considerable proportion of police officers aren’t yet open to it. Emotional layers In 2023, the VR training Conducting Checks Professionally won the Europol Award for Excellence, in the category Ethics, Diversity and Inclusion. Since then the training has been adopted in several different countries. In the Netherlands, about 400 discussion facilitators have been trained, and approximately 15,000 operational police officers have taken the training, along with about 10,000 officers from policing support. ‘Things are on the move, but we still have a long way to go. Ethnic profiling is a topic where you can get the basics in order relatively quickly. But you do have to be open to change. And a considerable proportion of police officers aren’t yet open to it. So first we have to work through the emotional layers. My thesis provides important pointers for how best to do this. The VR training can help. But the support of the organisation and management is also crucial to this process.’ New norms The Netherlands Police Academy recently published a report on this topic (in Dutch), which shows that a fifth of police officers in the Netherlands believe their team does not pay sufficient attention to ethnic profiling. ‘Let alone that teams are actively engaged in expanding their knowledge with VR training. This report also shows that officers still lack knowledge about what constitutes proper grounds for police checks.’ ‘For instance, a relatively large number of police employees still cite incorrect reasons for proactive police checks, such as having a gut feeling when they see “suspicious” individuals; or knowing that a certain group is overrepresented in crime statistics; or that someone’s ethnicity may suggest they don’t belong in a certain neighbourhood.’ ‘This means there’s still plenty of work to be done. Our approach is that people take this training as a team, not as individuals within a team. This helps us move towards a new norm, towards new shared agreements about how we want to conduct checks, how we are legally obliged to conduct them. If we accept this norm together, then we can gradually work towards a change in culture. Hopefully, greater awareness and knowledge about this topic will ultimately lead to behaviour change. VR has an important role to play in this process.’