What happens when politicians spend their energy debating online safety while the people locked away in British prisons are beating each other to death at twice the rate? We just found out.

As campaigners accuse Starmer of 'appeasing' big tech firms over internet regulation, the latest Ministry of Justice data reveals something far more urgent: serious prisoner-on-prisoner assaults have more than doubled in just one year.

The numbers are stark. In 2022, there were 41 serious assaults between prisoners across England and Wales. By 2023, that figure had rocketed to 84. That's a 105% increase in twelve months. (Source: Ministry of Justice, Safety in Custody -- safety-in-custody-assaults-dec-23 -- 3_1_Summary_assault_statistics)

These aren't minor scuffles. The Ministry of Justice defines serious assaults as those requiring hospital treatment, causing severe psychological harm, or involving sexual assault. Each of these 84 incidents represents someone who could have died.

The timing couldn't be more pointed. While Westminster argues about how strictly to regulate social media platforms, Britain's prisons have become twice as dangerous for the 80,000 people locked inside them. The political bandwidth devoted to online harms has produced endless committee hearings and regulatory consultations. The doubling of prison violence has produced silence.

This surge didn't happen in isolation. Prison populations have been climbing, but not at anything close to a 105% rate. The increase in serious violence is outpacing the growth in prisoner numbers by a massive margin, suggesting that conditions inside have deteriorated dramatically.

What makes this worse is the predictability. Prison violence doesn't spike overnight without warning signs. Staff shortages, overcrowding, cuts to rehabilitation programmes, reduced time out of cells. All of these create the conditions where disputes escalate into hospital visits.

Yet while prison governors have been sounding alarms about safety for years, the political conversation has moved elsewhere. Tech regulation generates headlines and committee appearances. Prison violence generates coroner's reports that few people read.

The contrast is telling. Politicians can summon tech executives to Westminster for public grillings about algorithms and content moderation. Meanwhile, the people responsible for keeping prisoners safe work in institutions where serious violence has doubled, largely out of public view.

Every one of those 84 serious assaults represents a failure. A failure to provide safe custody. A failure to prevent conflicts from escalating. A failure to staff prisons adequately. And ultimately, a failure of political priorities.

You can regulate social media platforms. You can hold hearings about online safety. But you cannot tweet your way out of prison violence that's doubled in twelve months while everyone was looking the other way.