Exclusive: Shabana Mahmood told companies she wanted ‘deeper collaboration’ to tackle prisons crisis

Tracking devices inserted under offenders’ skin, robots assigned to contain prisoners and driverless vehicles used to transport them were among the measures proposed by technology companies to ministers who are gathering ideas to tackle the crisis in the UK justice system.

The proposals were made at a meeting of more than two dozen tech companies in London last month, chaired by the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, minutes seen by the Guardian show. Amid an acute shortage of prison places and probation officers under severe strain, ministers told the companies they wanted ideas for using wearable technologies, behaviour monitoring and geolocation to create a “prison outside of prison”.

Those present included representatives of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Palantir, which works closely with the US military and has contracts with the NHS. IBM and the private prison operator Serco also attended alongside tagging and biometric companies, according to a response to a freedom of information request.

Mahmood told the tech companies she wants “deeper collaboration between government and tech to solve the prison capacity crisis, reduce reoffending and make communities safer”. She invited them to “scale and improve” the existing use of tagging “not just for monitoring but to drive rehabilitation and reduce crime”. The prisons minister, James Timpson, called for a “tech-led approach to justice”.

The initiative is the latest sign of the Labour government’s embrace of the technology industry to help deliver efficiency savings in creaking public services from schools to hospitals. In January, Keir Starmer declared that AI was a way “to transform our public services” and spoke about “totally rewiring government”.

The push by the Ministry of Justice follows last month’s review of sentencingby the former justice secretary David Gauke, which called for fewer short prison sentences and the greater use of AI as well as possible wider use of facial recognition technology in public to help cut the overcrowded prison population by almost 10,000.

At the meeting last month, which was hosted by the industry lobby group Tech UK, ministers asked the tech companies what a “digital, data and technology-enabled justice system” could look like in 2050. Responses included: “Real-time behaviour monitoring and subcutaneous tracking” to support the health, and “behaviour management” of people under the control of the criminal justice system; artificial intelligence advisers to support offenders’ rehabilitation; and robotics “used to manage prisoner movement and containment” including “self-driving vehicles [to] transport prisoners”.

Read More: Tech firms suggested placing trackers under offenders’ skin at meeting with justice secretary