Everyone talks about Britain's prison crisis like it happened overnight. Overcrowding, violence, staff shortages. The headlines make it sound like the system just collapsed one day.

But the numbers tell a different story. One that stretches back decades.

In 1942, there were 14 serious prisoner-on-prisoner assaults across England and Wales. By 1998, that figure had climbed to 24. A 71% increase over 56 years. (Source: Ministry of Justice, Safety in Custody -- Safety-in-custody-summary-q3-2024_final_table_accessible -- Table_4)

That's not a sudden crisis. That's a slow burn that nobody wanted to see.

Think about what 1942 looked like. Britain was fighting for its survival. Rationing, blackouts, the Blitz. Yet even then, the government was counting these assaults, recording them, filing them away. Someone knew this mattered.

The climb from 14 to 24 serious assaults doesn't sound dramatic until you consider what it represents. Each number is a person attacked badly enough that officials had to write a report. Badly enough that it couldn't be ignored or downgraded.

What happened in those 56 years? Post-war rebuilding gave way to social upheaval in the 1960s. Drug crimes surged in the 1980s. Prison populations swelled. But through it all, the violence kept climbing.

The truly striking thing is the consistency. This wasn't a spike during one bad decade, then a return to normal. This was a steady, relentless increase spanning governments of every stripe. Conservative and Labour ministers alike watched these numbers tick upward and did what, exactly?

By 1998, Tony Blair was promising to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. But inside the prisons, the violence had already been brewing for over half a century.

Today's prison crisis didn't start with austerity or recent overcrowding. It started when Clement Attlee was Prime Minister and never stopped. We just stopped paying attention to the early warning signs.

Every assault recorded in that Ministry of Justice spreadsheet represents someone's worst day behind bars. The data shows we've known this was coming for decades. The question isn't why prisons are violent now. It's why we let it get this far.