Prison officers are to use AI to stop violence before it breaks out.

Under the Ministry of Justice’s AI Action Plan, Ai will be used to predict the risk an offender could pose and informs decisions to put dangerous prisoners under tighter supervision to cut crime and deliver swifter justice for victims.

AI will be used across prisons, probation and courts to better track offenders and assess the risk they pose with tools that can predict violence, uncover secret messages and connect offender records across different systems. 

The AI violence predictor analyses different factors such as a prisoner’s age and previous involvement in violent incidents while in custody. This information will then be used to assess threat levels on wings and intervene or move prisoners before violence escalates.

Meanwhile, another AI tool will be used to digitally scan the contents of mobile phones seized from prisoners to rapidly flag messages that could provide intelligence on potential crimes being committed behind bars, such as secret code words.

The technology has already been used across the prison estate and has analysed over 8.6 million messages from 33,000 seized phones.  

Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Shabana 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."