A MODERNISED version of the "chain gang", with prisoners required to undertake community work while on probation, was unveiled by the Liberal Democrats yesterday.

Simon Hughes, the party’s home affairs spokesman, said criminals should be made to repay society by carrying out neighbourhood services such as street cleaning and removing graffiti.

These community sentences should be used as an alternative to prison, he added, with offenders kept under watch through electronic tagging.

"For many criminals prison is an occupational hazard," he said. "It is actually the soft option that locks them up for a few months in all-expenses-paid accommodation with three meals a day, a gym, pool table and a telly.

"Then they are free to leave and return to a life of crime - unrepentant, undaunted and undeterred.

"It is time for us to change that. Rather than taxpayers forking out £38,000 a year to keep someone in prison, it is time for us to demand something back."

Mr Hughes said the scheme, which would apply only in England and Wales, would end the culture where prison is regarded as a "cushy" number.

"We need a new principle - that offenders should mend the harm they have done, and mend it in the community where the offence took place."

The scheme would apply only to offenders guilty of relatively minor crimes and would not include those who committed serious offences such as rape or murder.

The plans were criticised by Paul Goggins, the home affairs minister, who said they were "outrageous and dangerous".