While politicians and tech leaders gather to discuss AI safety protocols in conferences like the one in Delhi, a more immediate safety crisis is spiralling out of control much closer to home. Britain's prisons have become catastrophically more violent, with serious prisoner-on-prisoner assaults surging to levels that should alarm anyone who believes in basic human safety.

24.4 prisoners per 1,000 suffered serious assaults from fellow inmates in 2023 (Source: Ministry of Justice, Safety in Custody -- safety-in-custody-assaults-dec-23 -- 3_1_Summary_assault_statistics). That represents a staggering 91% increase from 2022, when the rate was 12.8 per 1,000.

Put simply: if you were imprisoned in Britain last year, you were nearly twice as likely to be seriously hurt by another prisoner as you would have been just twelve months earlier. This isn't a gradual deterioration. It's a system in freefall.

These aren't minor scuffles or heated arguments. The Ministry of Justice defines serious assaults as those requiring hospital treatment, causing broken bones, or involving weapons. We're talking about life-changing injuries, permanent disabilities, and trauma that will follow these individuals long after they leave prison.

The timing matters. This explosion in violence coincides with chronic overcrowding, staff shortages, and budget cuts that have hollowed out rehabilitation programmes. When you pack more people into deteriorating conditions with fewer staff to maintain order, violence becomes inevitable.

But here's what makes this particularly troubling: prisons are supposed to be places where society manages risk and, ideally, reduces future harm. Instead, they're becoming training grounds for more serious violence. Prisoners who might have served their sentences and returned to communities as reformed individuals are instead experiencing or witnessing extreme brutality.

The human cost is obvious. But there's also a practical one. Every serious assault requires medical treatment the NHS must fund. Every traumatised prisoner becomes harder to rehabilitate. Every witness to extreme violence returns to society having learned that might makes right.

This doubling of serious prison violence isn't just a criminal justice problem. It's a public safety time bomb. When nearly one in forty prisoners suffers a serious assault each year, you're not running a correctional system. You're running something closer to a gladiator arena, funded by taxpayers who deserve far better from their government.