Could Texas hold the answer to Britain's prisons crisis? Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and James Timpson, the prisons minister, will visit the US state next month to learn about a scheme in which prisoners can shave time off their sentence by earning points for good behaviour and taking part in rehabilitative courses. Since the policy was introduced in 2007, the number of people behind bars in Texas has fallen from 152,661 to 129,653.

UK prison numbers hit a record high of 88,521 in September, said The Times, with spaces predicted to run out again in nine months. A forthcoming sentencing review is to examine how other countries have cut their prison population.

Norway
The maximum-security Halden Prison in Norway is the "flagship" of a criminal justice system based on the theory that prison should resemble life in the outside world to help inmates rehabilitate, said the i news site.

Prisoners are allowed to decide when they get up, what they wear, and how they fill their days, in cells with flatscreen TVs and desks. There is no barbed wire or electric fencing – "and yet no prisoner has ever tried to escape", said The New York Times.

Only 20% of released prisoners in Norway commit another crime within two years of release, compared to 60% in the UK, according to the think tank Bright Blue.

The Netherlands
Between 2005 and 2015, the Dutch prison population fell by 44%, said criminology professor Francis Pakes on The Conversation. This was in part because of a drop in serious crime but also because of shorter sentences, an increase in alternatives to prison and greater provision of mental health support for offenders. Some decommissioned prisons have been repurposed into hotels, temporary asylum centres and refugee housing.

Estonia
The Independent has reported that prisoners in the UK could be sent to Estonia to serve their sentence. The justice ministry there is considering renting the country's spare prison spaces to other countries.

There are only three prisons in Estonia, a fact Estonian public broadcaster ERR attributed to the increased use of alternative penalties for young offenders, shorter prison sentences and detention periods, and a higher rate of probation releases. 

Once the "enfant terrible" of the contemporary art world, the Turner Prize returns to London's Tate Britain for its 40th anniversary looking "knackered, creaking, and past it", said Laura Freeman in The Times.

"I wish there was some headline-worthy stunt" akin to Tracey Emin's unmade bed or Chris Ofili's elephant dung, but the offering this year is "too flat and inadequate to summon much fury". As it stands, the exhibition feels "utterly moribund": it's time to "revamp this sorry embarrassment of a prize or retire it completely".

'Tunnel vision'
While the exhibition steers clear of the "previous pitfalls" around gender and ethnicity – most of the artists this year are women, from a variety of cultural backgrounds and ages – the art itself has a "shocking case of tunnel vision", said Florence Hallett on the i news site.

Avoiding rocking the boat with any "provocations", the jury has stuck to a "trusty formula", said Alistair Sooke in The Telegraph: the latest edition is the most "conventional and uptight" in years.

Filipino-born artist Pio Abad takes on today's "hottest issues", such as the legacy of colonialism, yet his "elegant, considered" ink-and-screenprint works feel "ice cold" and "curiously repressed". Jasleen Kaur has drawn on her South Asian and Glaswegian heritage to create installations using "mundane objects" including a Ford Escort draped in a "giant crocheted doily", said Hallett. But the installation is "more boring than stirring".

'Unique perspective'
While it's unlikely the Turner Prize will ever reach the "pearl-clutching front-page heights" of the nineties and noughties, I really enjoyed the show this year, said Nancy Durrant in the London Evening Standard. Each of the artists on the shortlist brings a "unique perspective" and "distinctive approach". Claudette Johnson's large-scale canvases of Black figures feel like a "different show": "my, they're special".

Surely the highlight of the entire show is Johnson's "Pieta", said Hallett. Painted on a large canvas made of bark from Uganda, the portrait depicts a mother cradling the body of her adult son – a nod to the victims of knife crime. "There's no question that Johnson must win, but how I wish she had some worthy competition."

The hotly anticipated revival of  "War Horse", directed by Katie Henry and Tom Morris, "retains the power" that made it a "phenomenon" when it debuted at the National Theatre back in 2007, said Nick Ahad in The Guardian.

Based on Michael Morpurgo's novel, set in rural Devon at the outbreak of the First World War, it follows a young Albert (played by Tom Sturgess), whose beloved horse, Joey, is sold to an army cavalry unit and sent to the frontline. Albert follows him to France, "dreaming of a reunion and eventually only hoping for survival".

As Albert, Sturgess undergoes a dramatic transformation from an innocent young boy on his family's farm, to a man struggling to come to terms with the horrors of the battlefield. Both "dynamic and emotive", his performance has cemented his reputation as "one to watch", said Amy Walker in the Manchester Evening News.

But the "real stars of the show" are the puppets, said Theatre and Tonic. Designed by Adrian Kohler, the life-sized horses are a "true wonder", while the masterly puppeteers breathe life into the animals. "Expertly written", at once "emotional" and funny, it's a "heartbreaking" show.

"War Horse" is a powerful example of "every creative department working at its apotheosis", added Ahad in The Guardian. From the projections above the stage that serve as a "wonderful" backdrop to Rob Casey's "extraordinary" lighting, everything comes together beautifully. "Once again it will run and run."

At the Lowry, Salford until 28 September, then on tour

As a doctor, I'm no apologist for Wes Streeting – but here's where he's right about the NHS
Rachel Clarke in The Guardian
"Good old" senior NHS sources warn that Wes Streeting's "unflinching descriptions" of the health service's failings might "spook patients" and knock "staff morale", writes Rachel Clarke. "This is exactly the kind of vapid doublespeak that rots the NHS from the inside out." While I am no apologist for Streeting, as a doctor "I felt nothing but relief" when he "chose to spell out… the crisis conditions". You can't "fix what you refuse even to name".

The Tory leadership candidate Labour most fears
Katy Balls on the i news site
The Conservative leadership contest "hasn't exactly caught the nation's attention", writes Katy Balls, but a new leader of the opposition is "likely to change the mood in the Commons and potentially complicate Keir Starmer's life". There is "a chance" the Tory party "stays more in the centre than expected" – and three senior Labour aides cited centrist James Cleverly as the candidate "they would least like to get in".

The world must not fall for Iran's diplomatic overtures again
The Jerusalem Post editorial board
"Iran takes the West in general, and the United States in particular, for fools," said The Jerusalem Post. New president Masoud Pezeshkian "is attempting to set himself apart from his predecessor and offer a kinder, gentler Iran to the American public and the world". But "we implore the world not to be fooled, to look at all the fires Iran has ignited in the region, and not fall into this trap".