While experts gather in Delhi to debate AI safety risks, as reported by the BBC, a more immediate danger is escalating inside Britain's prison walls — and the numbers are staggering.

Last year, 24.4 out of every 1,000 prisoners were seriously assaulted by another inmate. That's nearly one in 40 prisoners suffering violence severe enough to require medical attention or cause lasting injury. (Source: Ministry of Justice, Safety in Custody -- safety-in-custody-assaults-dec-23 -- 3_1_Summary_assault_statistics)

The surge is breathtaking. In 2022, that figure stood at 12.8 per 1,000 prisoners. By 2023, it had rocketed to 24.4 — an increase of 91.1% in just twelve months. Britain's prisons didn't gradually become more violent. They exploded.

Put another way: if you walked into a British prison in 2022, your chance of being seriously assaulted by another prisoner was roughly 1.3%. A year later, that risk had doubled to 2.4%. For context, your lifetime chance of being struck by lightning is about 0.3%.

This isn't about minor scuffles or verbal altercations. These are serious assaults — attacks that left prisoners requiring hospital treatment, caused fractures, or inflicted wounds needing stitches. The kind of violence that, outside prison walls, would trigger police investigations and court cases.

The timing matters. Britain's prisons are bursting. The adult prison population has been climbing steadily, putting pressure on already stretched resources. Overcrowded wings, understaffed shifts, and prisoners spending more time locked in cells create a powder keg. The 2023 figures suggest that keg has now exploded.

What's particularly troubling is the speed of deterioration. Prison violence typically ebbs and flows gradually, linked to policy changes, staffing levels, or population shifts. A near-doubling in one year suggests something fundamental broke in the system's ability to maintain order.

Consider the mathematics: with roughly 83,000 prisoners in England and Wales, these rates translate to over 2,000 serious prisoner-on-prisoner assaults in 2023. That's six serious attacks every single day. Each represents someone's son, brother, or father — regardless of their crime — suffering violence that could have been prevented.

The data exposes an uncomfortable truth about British justice. We sentence people to imprisonment, not to violence. Yet our prison system has become so dysfunctional that serious assault has become a routine occupational hazard of incarceration.

While Delhi debates the theoretical risks of artificial intelligence, Britain's prisoners face very real, very immediate dangers every single day. The question isn't whether AI might become unsafe in the future. It's whether our prisons are safe right now. The answer, clearly, is no.