A prison officer starting their shift this morning faces odds no worker should accept. By year's end, if current trends hold, they'll witness 134 serious assaults — attacks severe enough to require medical treatment or cause lasting harm. That's more than two every week.

While Britain's politicians gather in Delhi to debate AI safety, a more immediate danger is escalating behind prison walls. Serious assaults in custody have surged 76% in just one year, jumping from 76 incidents in 2022 to 134 in 2023 (Source: Ministry of Justice, Safety in Custody -- safety-in-custody-assaults-dec-23 -- 3_1_Summary_assault_statistics).

This isn't about paperwork or policy. Every number represents a prison officer, healthcare worker, or education staff member who went to work and faced violence. Someone's colleague who didn't come home unchanged.

The scale of this increase defies easy explanation. A 76% surge in serious violence doesn't happen gradually — something fundamental shifted in Britain's prisons between 2022 and 2023. These aren't minor scuffles or raised voices. Serious assaults mean injuries requiring hospital treatment, weapons involved, or attacks that leave lasting physical or psychological damage.

Prison staff already work in one of Britain's most challenging environments. They manage overcrowded facilities, handle mental health crises, and maintain order among people serving sentences for serious crimes. Now they're doing it while facing nearly twice the risk of serious violence they faced just two years ago.

The timing matters too. As prisons struggle with record overcrowding and staff shortages, violence is spiralling upward. Each of those 134 serious assaults represents a system under extreme pressure — where tensions that might once have been managed through de-escalation or proper staffing now explode into violence.

For context, 134 serious assaults means roughly 11 each month — a frequency that would be unacceptable in any other workplace. Imagine if office workers, teachers, or factory employees faced those odds. There would be inquiries, emergency measures, immediate action.

Yet this surge in prison violence barely registers in national debate. While politicians discuss future risks from artificial intelligence, current risks to real people working in British prisons have nearly doubled in twelve months.

This data comes with no explanation, no government response, no plan to address the 76% increase. Just numbers that represent lives disrupted, careers ended, families affected by workplace violence that's spiralling out of control.

Prison staff deserve better than becoming statistics in a system that's failing to protect them.