The United Kingdom is considering inserting AI chips into criminals to predict crimes because there are no vacancies in prisons.

It was in January 2025 when UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared that Artificial Intelligence was a way to "transform our public services" and spoke of "totally rewiring government." Now, several months later, we see what the president meant.

It was earlier this month that more than 20 tech companies met in London, England, with Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, seeking technological solutions to the significant problem facing the UK: prisons are overcrowded and there are not enough spaces for all inmates.

To address this issue, the British government has informed companies seeking ideas for using wearable technologies, behavioral tracking, and geolocation to create a "prison outside of prison."

Companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM were among those present, and officials called for "closer collaboration between government and technology to address the prison capacity crisis, reduce recidivism, and make communities safer."

He invited them to "expand and improve" the current use of electronic wristbands "not only for monitoring, but to promote rehabilitation and reduce crime." Prisons Minister James Timpson advocated for a "technological approach to justice," The Guardian reports.

The UK government is advocating for greater use of AI, as well as a potential broader use of facial recognition technology in public, to help reduce the country's overcrowded prisons by nearly 10,000.

Among the proposed measures were ideas such as AI tracking devices inserted under the skin of criminals , robots designed to restrain prisoners, and driverless vehicles used to transport them.

However, these ideas aren't resonating with everyone, and human rights organizations called the ideas "alarmingly dystopian" and warned that the meeting suggested the government might be "getting too close to the tech giants."

A government source stressed that the ideas put forward so far were hypotheses about the future of criminal management in order to better protect citizens.