Low-security killers

There are 142 convicted murderers classified as minimum-security prisoners, National Party justice and corrections spokesman Simon Power revealed yesterday.

Some minimum-security prisoners have recently escaped, including axe murderer John Ericson, who walked away from an unsupervised prison work party outside Wellington Prison on November 2. He surrendered 26 hours later after a manhunt.

Mr Power said the idea of murderers doing out-of-prison work was chilling. Cabinet minister Annette King told Parliament the classification system might need looking at. However, it had been used by hundreds of prisoners since it was set up in 1991 under a National Government.