31-07-2025
Prisons get ‘Minority Report' AI profiling to avert violence
Prison officers will use Minority Report-style technology to identify potentially violent inmates before they have launched an attack in a major expansion of artificial intelligence in the criminal justice system.
Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, will on Thursday announce plans to give the prison service use of the artificial intelligence software.
The AI violence predictor analyses factors such as a prisoner's age and previous involvement in violent incidents while in custody. This will help prison officers assess threat levels on wings and enable them to intervene or move prisoners before violence escalates — or before it breaks out at all. It will also inform decisions to put dangerous prisoners under tighter supervision.
It has drawn comparisons with futuristic technology featured in the 2002 film with Tom Cruise in which a specialised police department named 'Precrime' apprehends criminals using foreknowledge provided by three psychics, or 'precogs', who can predict crime before it is committed.
Mahmood's AI plan also includes a tool that can digitally scan the contents of mobile phones seized from prisoners, rapidly flagging messages that may provide intelligence such as inmates' code words.
It will be deployed to enable staff to uncover potential for threats of violence to other inmates or prison officers as well as plans to escape or smuggle in weapons and other contraband.
The phones, often used for gang activity, drug trafficking and intimidation, are a major source of violence in prisons, which has soared to record levels.
The technology uses AI-driven language analysis and has been trialled across the prison estate, analysing more than 8.6 million messages from 33,000 seized phones.
The plan also sets out proposals for the creation of a single digital ID for all offenders. AI will help link records across courts, prisons and probation for the first time, linking records that previous search systems may never have connected because of minor typos or missing words. This could lead to more effective monitoring and sentencing.
Mahmood said: 'Artificial intelligence will transform the justice system. We are embracing its full potential as part of our Plan for Change.
'These tools are already fighting violence in prisons, tracking offenders and releasing our staff to focus on what they do best: cutting crime and making our streets safer.'
The plan represents the government's latest effort to regain control of prisons in England and Wales as violence and drug use spirals.
Being a prison guard has never been more dangerous — last year a record 10,605 assaults on staff were recorded, 15 per cent higher than the previous year and averaging 29 assaults on a prison officer every day.
Research by the Ministry of Justice this year found a direct link between violence behind bars and overcrowding. Prisons in England and Wales are at 99 per cent capacity and, in August last year, had only 80 spaces left. The study found that inmates of overcrowded jails were 20 per cent more likely to be involved in assaults.
Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, warned in his annual report this month that jails were plagued with 'overwhelming' quantities of illicit drugs, mobile phones and other contraband.
He said drone technology posed a level of risk 'different from what we've seen in the past' and was now so sophisticated that packages of up to 10kg were being flown over prison gates. Inmates were routinely offered a 'menu of drugs'.
Taylor said there was also a 'theoretical possibility' that a drone could lift a prisoner out of jail in the near future.
