FOIA docs show Palantir has been in talks with the UK's Ministry of Justice about using its tech to calculate the “reoffending risks” of prisoners
OGRS & OASIS. Compared to many others systems they've been pretty well governed, and mostly in-house (two likely linked things!). This is not so much about magic prediction as a hollowing out of the state to data bros. https://www.theguardian.com/ ... via @re_vbrakel @junesim63@mstdn.social : So Palantir is now attempting to get its grubby hands on Ministry of Justice prison data, with all that implies. — “We are inviting in a highly extractive corporate entity which is always going to act in its own interests first, not what would ultimately be the interests of the NHS or other public services. … Forums: r/ukpolitics : Tech firm Palantir spoke with MoJ about calculating prisoners' ‘reoffending risks’ r/unitedkingdom : Tech firm Palantir spoke with MoJ about calculating prisoners' ‘reoffending risks’
Context & Ripple Effects
Palantir had already been pursuing a deeper UK public-sector role through NHS data infrastructure, including a reported plan to expand its NHS ties by buying smaller UK health-data rivals. This Ministry of Justice engagement places prison and probation data alongside that broader push for access to sensitive operational datasets.
The issue is not simply a new scoring tool: the corpus also documents how Palantir’s Gotham platform can consolidate extensive law-enforcement information for rapid access by investigators. That makes governance over data access, model use, and human decision-making central to any MoJ pilot or procurement.
First-order effects
- The MoJ and Palantir must define whether—and under what controls—prison data can be used to support reoffending-risk calculations; the reported talks do not establish a deployment.
- Palantir gains a potential entry point into another UK justice workflow, while existing in-house risk-assessment arrangements face closer scrutiny over whether they would be supplemented or displaced.
Second-order effects
- Any move toward a commercial platform is likely to increase demands from privacy and justice stakeholders for procurement transparency, data-access limits, and clear accountability for risk scores.
- Incumbent public-sector systems and other suppliers would need to compete not only on predictive capability but on interoperability, auditability, and the ability to preserve institutional control of sensitive records.
Third-order effects
- If sensitive public-service data is increasingly routed through a small set of analytics vendors, the long-term choice shifts from buying software to governing durable dependencies on data platforms.
- This is a test case for public-safety AI governance: whether automated risk tools remain bounded decision support with meaningful oversight, or become embedded infrastructure that shapes institutional judgments.
The trend: The story is one instance of state-compatible analytics vendors expanding from data platforms into high-consequence public-sector decision workflows.