Tory challenge over jails future

Mr Cameron has commissioned a review of prison policy from shadow justice secretary Nick Herbert which will focus on increasing cell numbers, improving rehabilitation and closer supervision after release.

In an unusual move, he called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to steal his policies to deal with what he said was a "crisis" in the prison system.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Cameron condemned the Government's programme of early releases to ease overcrowding as "a panic-driven emergency measure that is the direct and foreseeable result of a failure of planning and which will do nothing to resolve the underlying crisis".

As long ago as 2002, officials were warning that 88,000 prison places would be needed in England and Wales by 2007, rather than the 80,000 currently available, said Mr Cameron.

And he said that many more places could be created by tearing down Victorian city centre jails and either replacing them with modern buildings with more cells or selling off the land for development and using the proceeds to build larger prisons elsewhere.

Citing a designer who has suggested a modern prison on the site of Wandsworth jail in south London could house the same number of convicts in two-thirds of the space, Mr Cameron said: "The age of the huge Victorian prison may be coming to an end."

He added: "We need to know the proper capacity of the prison system: how many prison places we are going to need, where they should be and how we will plan for them. We must fit the number of prison places to the number of prisoners, not the other way round."

Mr Cameron also said he wanted to work with prison officers and governors to reform the way jails are run, with more emphasis on education, training and work.

"We need prisons with a purpose which goes beyond simply locking people up," he wrote. And he said that prisoners should not be left adrift when they are freed.