These images showing schoolchildren dressed up as prisoners and guards in a game similar to the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment at a careers event have caused public outcry.
According to reports, a group of children aged between seven and eight years old and their parents were invited to attend a career guidance event staged in the city of Murmansk in Russia’s far northwestern Murmansk Oblast region.
During the event, held in the local Murmansk Mall shopping centre and attended by local police officials, the children were offered to play police officers and inmates.
Every schoolchild chose which role they wanted to play in the game.
The children who chose to play police officers were dressed in blue vests with ‘Police’ written in Russian on their backs.
The children who chose to play perpetrators were dressed in the striped uniform of Russian inmates.
According to a police report on the event, the children were taught to draw police sketches, arrest perpetrators, take fingerprints and so on.
In one of the pictures, a boy dressed as an inmate can be seen standing in front of an improvised police lineup wall while holding a sign with his number.
A girl playing a police officer can be seen taking a picture of the boy on her smartphone.
Another picture shows a boy dressed in a police vest pointing his plastic pistol at the camera.
One more picture shows three boys playing police officers escorting a boy playing a perpetrator.
The pictures were posted on the local police website, though some of them were later deleted after causing huge public outcry.
According to police, the goal of the event was to give children an idea of police work and spark their interest in the field.
But Senator, and Member of the Federation Council of Russia, (the lower chamber of Russian parliament) Elena Popova condemned the event saying: “This role game was a big mistake. It can badly affect the psyche of the children.”
The game reminded locals of the Stanford Prison Experiment that was a social psychology experiment carried out in 1971 at Stanford University. Volunteers were randomly assigned to be either “guards” or “prisoners” in a mock prison.
Several of the assigned “prisoners” left halfway through the experiment with reports claiming the volunteers quickly embraced their assigned roles, with some guards subjecting prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the “prisoners” were said to have been emotionally traumatised in the experiment.
Social media user ‘Lena Yampolskaya’ said: “This game reminds me of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Adults should not make children play in such games.”
And ‘Irina Chempuk’ said: “I just want to ask the organisers of this event one thing: Are you out of your mind?”
While ‘Yaroslav Smirnov’ said: “So the children were taught to get used to the inmates’ uniform during this event? Wow.”
And ‘Marina Sayapina’ said: “I hope they will not offer children to play brothel at least.”
The local Investigative Committee is investigating the incident.
Story By: Roksana Panashchuk, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
