While political debates rage in Delhi about AI safety, Britain's prisons are facing a far more immediate crisis of human safety. Serious assault incidents have exploded to levels that would have been unthinkable just years ago.

In 2020, there were roughly 20 serious assaults per 1,000 prisoners. By 2021, that figure had crept up slightly. Then 2022 saw it jump to 23.7 per 1,000 — already a worrying trend. But 2023 brought something unprecedented: 39 serious assaults per 1,000 prisoners, a staggering 64% increase in just twelve months (Source: Ministry of Justice, Safety in Custody).

To put this in human terms: if you locked 1,000 people in a building, you'd expect 39 of them to be seriously assaulted within a year. That's not a prison system — that's barely controlled chaos.

The timeline tells the story of a system losing its grip. The early 2020s saw prison populations fluctuate due to COVID-19 court delays, but violence was still relatively contained. Then came the cost-of-living crisis, staffing shortages, and an increasingly desperate prison estate trying to manage overcrowding with fewer resources.

What changed so dramatically in 2023? The data doesn't lie — something fundamental broke in our custody system. Whether it was staffing levels finally hitting a critical threshold, prisoner demographics shifting, or security protocols failing, the result is clear: nearly four serious assaults for every 100 prisoners in a single year.

This isn't just about numbers on a spreadsheet. Each incident represents someone being seriously hurt — prisoners, yes, but also the prison officers trying to maintain order in increasingly dangerous conditions. The 64% surge suggests we've crossed a tipping point where violence begets more violence.

Compare this trajectory to other public safety metrics, and the prison crisis stands out starkly. While workplace injuries in most sectors have stabilised or improved, our custodial institutions are becoming exponentially more dangerous places to be — whether you're serving time or trying to keep the peace.

The question isn't whether this trend will continue — at this rate of increase, it's whether the system can function at all. When serious violence becomes this routine, you're not running a prison system anymore. You're running something closer to a containment failure.