The inside track on curbing UK prison violence | Letters
Alex South’s harrowing account of violence in prisons (Death on the inside: as a prison officer, I saw how the system perpetuates violence, 13 January) deserves more than our sympathy – it demands we recognise these murders and assaults not as symptoms of a broken system, but as a foghorn blaring warnings about fundamental failures.I work in prisoner rehabilitation.I see what South describes from the other side: men whose “scaffolding” is indeed flimsy, who have accumulated trauma before and during incarceration.But I also see what happens when that changes.Our service users work in cafes, bakeries and bike shops, not because we believe in the redemptive power of bread or bicycles, but because meaningful work and purposeful activity are the foundations of desistance.
I was a prisoner.I was lucky, the prison was well staffed with experienced officers, yet the prison was still a violent place, with many prisoners self-medicating with illegal drugs.The incidents South describes are the inevitable outcome of policy decisions that prioritise capacity over rehabilitation, containment over change and political expediency over evidence.When the House of Lords justice committee stresses the importance of education and the government agrees, then announces funding cuts, we are not witnessing administrative incompetence.We are witnessing ideological commitment to a system that creates exactly the outcomes it claims to prevent.
David Lammy inherited a crisis, yes.But until we build prisons around rehabilitation rather than simply containment, until we fund education and meaningful activity, until we staff prisons with properly trained officers who can actually see the people they’re responsible for – we are choosing to perpetuate exactly the violence and recidivism we claim to oppose.James StoddartProject coordinator, the Oswin Project Reading Alex South’s article reminded me of the murder that occurred in a prison when I was governor.The hardest thing I have ever done was to meet with the victim’s family; I had no words to adequately explain how their son had been killed when he was in my care.The incident was a shock to staff and prisoners alike, and it hung in the air for weeks.
I am sorry that Alex experienced little support during her time in the Prison Service,On that occasion, staff did get invaluable support from the trauma team at another prison,What I think is so sad is that we are expecting people to work in environments that have become so violent,Prisons are unlikely to improve until they are properly staffed and those in custody have decent time out of their cells every day with purposeful activity, which will engage them and help improve their life chances on release,Judith FelineMaidstone, Kent The article reflects my own experience.
I was hired as a horticultural instructor to build rehabilitative programmes, yet none were allowed to begin,Instead, I covered staff shortages and supervised “tea‑bag workshops” offering no skills or progression,The workshop was chaotic, poorly managed and disconnected from any rehabilitative purpose,This contrasted sharply with the structured, evidence‑based horticulture programmes I observed in US prisons during my Churchill Fellowship,Returning made the failures stark: absent leadership, overstretched staff and activities that prepared prisoners for nothing.
Richard EltringhamLeicester Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section,
Deactivate your X account – you won’t miss it when it’s gone | Letter
As a past follower of Marie Le Conte (AKA the Young Vulgarian) on X, I read her column on leaving the platform with interest, complete empathy and self-reflection (To anybody still using X: sexual abuse content is the final straw, it’s time to leave, 12 January).I joined X – or rather, Twitter – in 2007 after reading a Guardian article on the five next hit websites. Needless to say, most of the others have been forgotten. I was bored in my uni halls and it sounded the most interesting.In those days one could sit and watch the global feed – every tweet being posted in the world – with notable seconds between posts
‘Still here!’: X’s Grok AI tool accessible in Malaysia and Indonesia despite ban
Days after Malaysia made global headlines by announcing it would temporarily ban Grok over its ability to generate “grossly offensive and nonconsensual manipulated images”, the generative AI tool was conversing breezily with accounts registered in the country.“Still here! That DNS block in Malaysia is pretty lightweight – easy to bypass with a VPN or DNS tweak,” Grok’s account on X said in response to a question from a user.Grok’s ability to allow users to create sexually explicit images, including images of children, has created a global outcry over recent weeks, with regulators and politicians around the world launching investigations. Indonesia and Malaysia became the first two countries to announce blocks on the technology, with Malaysia’s regulatory body saying last Sunday it had “directed a temporary restriction” on access to Grok, effective as of 11 January 2026. Officials in the Philippines have said they too plan to ban the technology
‘We could hit a wall’: why trillions of dollars of risk is no guarantee of AI reward
Will the race to artificial general intelligence (AGI) lead us to a land of financial plenty – or will it end in a 2008-style bust? Trillions of dollars rest on the answer.The figures are staggering: an estimated $2.9tn (£2.2tn) being spent on datacentres, the central nervous systems of AI tools; the more than $4tn stock market capitalisation of Nvidia, the company that makes the chips powering cutting-edge AI systems; and the $100m signing-on bonuses offered by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to top engineers at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.These sky-high numbers are all propped up by investors who expect a return on their trillions
He called himself an ‘untouchable hacker god’. But who was behind the biggest crime Finland has ever known?
Tiina Parikka was half-naked when she read the email. It was a Saturday in late October 2020, and Parikka had spent the morning sorting out plans for distance learning after a Covid outbreak at the school where she was headteacher. She had taken a sauna at her flat in Vantaa, just outside Finland’s capital, Helsinki, and when she came into her bedroom to get dressed, she idly checked her phone. There was a message that began with Parikka’s name and her social security number – the unique code used to identify Finnish people when they access healthcare, education and banking. “I knew then that this is not a game,” she says
China blocks Nvidia H200 AI chips that US government cleared for export – report
Suppliers of parts for Nvidia’s H200 have paused production after Chinese customs officials blocked shipments of the newly approved artificial intelligence processors from entering China, according to a report.Reuters could not immediately verify the report, which appeared in the Financial Times citing two people with knowledge of the matter. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment made outside regular business hours.Nvidia had expected more than one million orders from Chinese clients, the report said, adding that its suppliers had been operating around the clock to prepare for shipping as early as March.Chinese customs authorities this week told customs agents that Nvidia’s H200 chips were not permitted to enter the country, Reuters reported
ChatGPT to start showing ads in the US
ChatGPT will start including advertisements beside answers for US users as OpenAI seeks a new revenue stream.The ads will be tested first in ChatGPT for US users only, the company announced on Friday, after increasing speculation that the San Francisco firm would turn to a potential cashflow model on top of its current subscriptions.The ads will start in the coming weeks and will be included above or below, rather than within, answers. Mock-ups circulated by the company show the ads in a tinted box. They will be served to adult users “when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service based on your current conversation”, according to OpenAI’s announcement
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