Offenders could serve sentence in Estonian prisons to ease overcrowding
The government is not ruling out sending offenders to Estonia as a means of alleviating severe overcrowding on the UK prison estate.
Sky News understands that having offenders serve out their sentence in the Baltic state is one of many options being considered to address over-capacity on the prison estate – where there are thought to be just over 1,000 spaces left in prisons across England and Wales.
Since coming into office, Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, has warned overcrowding could lead to a breakdown in law and order if action is not taken to alleviate pressure on the system.
Last month, with the country still feeling the impact of the riots that took place in the wake of the Southport stabbings, spare spaces were understood to have been reduced to just 100 in male prisons across England and Wales – the closest the system has come to running out of capacity.
The government has already taken controversial steps to alleviate overcrowding, including by allowing the early release of prisoners who have served 40% of their sentence.
Prisoners in England and Wales, apart from the most serious offenders, are usually released on licence after serving 50% of their sentence – but from this month, this will be reduced to 40%.
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Starmer blames Tories over prisons
Magistrates were last month told to consider pushing back the sentencing of criminals because of concerns about overcrowding.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The new government inherited a justice system in crisis, with prisons on the point of collapse.
“We will continue to investigate all viable options to increase the number of places in the prisons estate so we can keep locking up dangerous criminals and protect the public.”
The idea of sending criminals on the British prison estate to Estonia was first floated by former justice secretary Alex Chalk.
He told last year’s Conservative Party conference that the then government under Rishi Sunak would enter exploratory discussions with countries in Europe over the possibility of renting prison space abroad.
Read more on this story:
Labour can blame the Tories – but tough choices are coming
‘Inevitable things will go wrong’ when prisoners freed early
The previous government said it would only enter into agreement with European countries provided aspects of the prison system, including facilities and rehabilitation, matched UK standards.
It argued its policy was in line with steps taken by Belgium and Norway, which have used foreign prison places in the Netherlands in the last decade.
In her first speech as justice secretary, Ms Mahmood blamed Mr Sunak “and his gang in Number 10” for being “too weak to heed the warning signs that were flashing”.
More than 10,000 prisoners were released early under the previous government between October last year and June this year, leaked documents suggest.
Major US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is expanding payment options in Poland by integrating with one of the country’s most widely used mobile payment systems.
Coinbase has partnered with European payment processor PPro to enable payments via Blik, a popular Polish mobile payment network with nearly 20 million users.
The announcement was made by Coinbase executive and NFT Paris co-founder Côme Prost, who joined the exchange in February 2024 to lead its French operations.
“Improving local payment rails is a key focus for us,” Prost said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday, highlighting the importance of simple, fast and familiar payment options in driving crypto adoption.
Coinbase holds MiCA licence as Poland struggles to pass crypto bill
Coinbase’s local expansion comes as Poland struggles to pass cryptocurrency legislation amid political divisions. Last week, the Polish government reintroduced an identical version of a strict crypto bill that had been vetoed by President Karol Nawrocki just weeks earlier.
Coinbase holds a license under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which it secured in June.
“It has been a pleasure working with the team at Coinbase to launch Blik on their platform to enable Polish customers to access Crypto,” PPro executive Tom Benson wrote in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.
He added that he was confident the partnership with Coinbase would deepen in 2026 as the company adds more local payment methods and expands collaboration across additional areas.
Poland’s crypto adoption booming despite lagging local regulation
Crypto adoption in Poland has surged despite slow-moving local legislation, with the country emerging as one of the leaders in Chainalysis’ 2025 European Crypto Adoption report.
Poland is the only EU member state without a functioning national legal framework to enforce the MiCA regulation, even though the framework applies even without formal implementation.
Following the president’s veto of the government’s bill, Poland is indeed the only EU member state without any step toward implementation,” Juan Ignacio Ibañez, a member of the Technical Committee of the MiCA Crypto Alliance, told Cointelegraph recently.
Related: Coinbase adds stock trading, prediction markets in ‘everything app’ push
“Not every country has a single implementation law,” he added, pointing to Germany and France, which have specific laws, while other member states, such as Spain and Luxembourg, rely on amendments to existing financial legislation.
Ibañez noted, however, that a lag in implementation does not mean all countries are equally advanced, nor does it imply that Poland is more hostile to crypto. Hungary, for example, has implemented MiCA with additional regulations that are “more unfriendly to crypto asset service providers than Poland,” he added.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Trading and Markets Division on Wednesday laid out how broker-dealers can custody tokenized stocks and bonds under existing customer protection rules, signaling that blockchain-based crypto asset securities will be slotted into traditional securities safeguards rather than treated as a new category.
The division said it would not object to broker-dealers deeming themselves in possession of crypto asset securities under existing customer protection rules, as long as they meet a set of operational, security and governance conditions. This applies only to crypto securities, including tokenized stocks or bonds.
While the statement is not a rule, it provides clarity on how US regulators expect tokenized securities to fit within traditional market safeguards.
The guidance suggests that tokenized securities are not treated as a new asset class with unique rules. Instead, they are being placed into existing broker-dealer frameworks, even if they settle within blockchain networks.
TradFi on a blockchain: Tokenized securities’ custody rules
At the core of the statement is Rule 15c3-3, the regulator’s consumer protection rule. This requires broker-dealers to maintain control or physical possession of fully paid customer securities.
The division said that crypto asset securities recorded in blockchains may satisfy the “physical possession” requirements under certain circumstances. This means broker-dealers must retain exclusive control over the private keys used to access and transfer the assets.
Despite being on a blockchain, customers and third parties, including affiliates, should not have the ability to move the security without the authorization of the broker.
The statement draws a clear boundary between tokenized securities and crypto-native self-custody models. It prioritizes customer protection over crypto’s permissionless ethos.
Broker-dealers are expected to prepare for scenarios like 51% attacks, hard forks, airdrops and other disruptions. They must also maintain plans that account for seizure, freezing or transfer restrictions under lawful orders.
The guidance reinforces that, regardless of the technologies used to issue or settle tokenized stocks or bonds, they are expected to behave like securities first.
Trading tokenized securities inside regulated market rails
In a separate statement issued the same day, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce highlighted the trading-side challenges that remain for crypto asset securities.
Peirce raised questions focusing on national securities exchanges and alternative trading systems that facilitate trading crypto asset securities, including pairs where one asset is a security and the other is not.
The questions reflect growing pressure to settle blockchain-based assets with market-structure rules originally designed for traditional equities.
Peirce’s request raises whether existing frameworks and related disclosures and reporting requirements impose costs that outweigh their benefits when applied to crypto trading platforms.
Related: US Fed pulls guidance blocking its banks from engaging with crypto
Platforms jumping into tokenized equities
The statements come as crypto platforms and trading institutions have increasingly begun to tokenize securities.
On Nov. 30, Nasdaq’s head of digital assets strategy, Matt Savarese, said the exchange plans to move fast on tokenized stocks. He said the exchange plans to work with the SEC as quickly as possible to make the feature available in the trading platform.
On Tuesday, Securitize, which focuses on tokenizing securities, announced that it plans to launch compliant, onchain trading for tokenized stocks. The company said that it will be presented in a swap-style interface familiar to decentralized finance (DeFi) users.
On Thursday, crypto exchange Coinbase launched a stock trading feature as part of its push to become an “everything exchange.”
Magazine: Koreans ‘pump’ alts after Upbit hack, China BTC mining surge: Asia Express
Teachers will be trained to spot early signs of misogyny in boys and steer them away from it as part of the government’s long-awaited strategy to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG).
Sir Keir Starmer warned “too often toxic ideas are taking hold early and going unchallenged”, with more than 40% of young men said to hold a positive view of misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate.
He has been challenged about his ideology in the past and called the concerns “garbage”.
Sir Keir’s government will formally unveil a £20m package of measures today, with £16m coming from the taxpayer and £4m from philanthropists and partners.
Teachers will also get specialist training on how to talk to pupils about issues like consent and the dangers of sharing intimate images – and all secondary school pupils in England will be taught about healthy relationships.
Such lessons will be mandatory by the end of this parliament in 2029, with schools to be chosen for a pilot scheme in 2026, which experts will be brought in to deliver.
And an online helpline will be set up for teenagers with concerns about their own behaviour in relationships.
The measures are part of the government’s strategy to halve VAWG in a decade, and the prime minister said it’s a “responsibility we owe to the next generation”.
“Every parent should be able to trust that their daughter is safe at school, online and in her relationships,” he said.
“This government is stepping in sooner – backing teachers, calling out misogyny, and intervening when warning signs appear – to stop harm before it starts.”
The PM says ‘toxic’ attitudes are going unchallenged in schools. Pic: Reuters
Department for Education-commissioned research found 70% of secondary school teachers surveyed said their school had actively dealt with sexual violence and/or harassment between children.
VAWG minister Jess Phillips told Sky News political editor Beth Rigby she had spoken to her own children about what’s normal sexual behaviour and what isn’t because she knows “what they might be exposed to”.
She said if the government does nothing to intervene, VAWG could double rather than be halved.
Jess Phillips: I’ve talked to my kids about strangulation
Beth Rigby speaks to Jess Phillips about the plans
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Teams deployed to tackle violence ’emergency’
Domestic abuse survivors to get NHS help
The government has already announced several other measures to tackle VAWG this week, including introducing specialist rape and sexual offences investigators to every police force, better support for survivors in the NHS, and a £19m funding boost for councils to provide safe housing for domestic abuse survivors.
Investment ‘falls short’
But Dame Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, said the commitments “do not go far enough” and schools are overburdened already.
“Today’s strategy rightly recognises the scale of this challenge and the need to address the misogynistic attitudes that underpin it, but the level of investment to achieve this falls seriously short,” she said.
Claire Waxman, the incoming victims commissioner, added: “Victim services are not an optional extra to this strategy – they must be the backbone of it.
“Without clear, sustainable investment and cross-government leadership, I am concerned we run the risk of the strategy amounting to less than the sum of its parts; a wish list of tactical measures rather than a bold, unifying strategic framework.”
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