Cameron pledges 'min-max' prison terms

Tory leader David Cameron has outlined plans for a prisons policy where inmates have to "earn their release".

Mr Cameron said new "min-max" sentences - which set a minimum and maximum period behind bars - would give convicted criminals no chance of parole until the minimum term had been served.

He said: "Prisoners have to earn their release. Today, I think almost everything with the system is wrong.

"A criminal goes to court, they are told they have got a four-year sentence and they are let out after two, so everybody feels cheated.

"We are going to change that and say the judge should read out what we call the 'min-max'.

"And then the prisoner has to earn release through good behaviour, through hard work, through making reparations to their victims.

"The real emphasis on it is actually turning prisons into places, not where we just warehouse prisoners, and bang them up for 23 hours a day in their cell.

"They should be places of work, of rehabilitation and of reparation, so that the work prisoners do do, means that they can pay money back to their victims - these are really important policies."

The Tory plans, set out in a "Green Paper", would mean the additional capacity will be used to end the system of automatic release for prisoners after they have completed half the jail term handed down in court.

Prisons Minister David Hanson said: "This is yet another uncosted spending commitment from the Tories.

"The Conservatives' plans come amid the biggest prison building programme in history.

"Most of their proposals seem to be either way behind what we are doing already, schemes they have already announced or uncosted spending pledges.

"Coming on the back of a series of uncosted tax and spending commitments that the Tories have already made, the challenge for David Cameron and George Osborne will be to explain how they can pay for any of this."

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: "Successive governments have allowed prisons to rot in a policy vacuum.

"Now the Conservatives are turning the spotlight on our most neglected and least visible public service, this Government must reach beyond party politics and, instead of arguing about who can spend most money on more jails, it should establish a Royal Commission on the nature and purpose of imprisonment."

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