Can you imagine how bad things would be if they taught convicts to program?

=======================================

Company Takes Call Centers to Prisons
Inmates Help Consulting Business Prevent Jobs From Going Overseas
By ANDREW KRAMER, AP

ONTARIO, Ore. (Feb. 25) - Chris Harry is a model employee for the U.S. call
center industry. The 25-year-old arrives promptly at his cubicle, speaks
courteously on the phone and is never late or absent.

He plans to stick with his job for three years, a boon in an industry plagued
by high turnover. And he gladly works for money many Americans would scoff at
- $130 or so a month.

After all, he could be back swabbing cell block floors for a third of that.

"I can't complain about fair," said Harry, who was sentenced to 10 years and
eight months for robbery. "I did a crime and I'm in prison. At least I'm not
wearing a ball and chain."

Prison inmates like Harry are the reason Perry Johnson Inc., a Southfield,
Mich.-based consulting company, chose to remain in the U.S. rather than join a
host of telemarketing companies moving offshore.

Perry Johnson had intended to move to India. But the company chose instead to
open inside the Snake River Correctional Institution, a sprawling razor wire
and cinder block state penitentiary a few miles west of the Idaho line.

The center's opening followed a yearlong effort by the Oregon Department of
Corrections to recruit businesses that would otherwise move offshore, and
echoes a national trend among state and federal prisons to recruit such companies.

"This is a niche where the prison industry could really help the U.S.
economy," said Robert Killgore, director of Inside Oregon Enterprises, the
quasi-state agency that recruits for-profit business to prisons.

"I'm really excited about this," he said. "We keep the benefits here in the
United States with companies where it's fruitless to compete on the outside."

Prison officials have long praised work programs for lowering recidivism and
teaching inmates skills and self-respect, yet have been criticized by unions
for taking jobs from the private sector.

Those concerns are moot if a company planned to leave the country anyway,
Killgore said. National prison labor trade groups support the idea.

Ten states including Oregon employ inmates in for-profit call centers. Oregon
and many others also make garments and furniture - industries that have
largely moved offshore, other than in prisons. Inmates are paid between 12 cents
and $5.69 an hour, according to Bureau of Prisons statistics.

Perry Johnson Inc. opened its call center in an Oregon prison for half the
price of relocating to India, and achieved many of the same benefits, according
to Mike Reagan, director of Inside Oregon Enterprises at Snake River.

 "This is a niche where the prison industry could really help the U.S.
economy."
-Robert Killgore, director of an agency that recruits for-profit business to
prisons

At Snake River, to qualify for the call center job, inmates must have three
to five years remaining on their sentence. Outside, the typical turnover is
nine months.

Also, inmates make good telemarketers, prison officials said.

"They see an opportunity to talk to people and learn how to communicate,"
said Nick Armenakis, a manager for Inside Oregon Enterprises. "They are told that
to keep these jobs, they have to be very patient and very contrite, and
follow protocol."

The convicts pitch Perry Johnson's quality control consulting service to
executives at American businesses, sometimes even company presidents.

Prison officials randomly monitor inmates' phone conversations and all calls
are digitally recorded to discourage personal calls or illegal activity.

The prisoners work 40-hour weeks in rows of nondescript cubicles.

Critics assail the idea of retaining American jobs in prisons as a flagrant
violation of minimum wage laws and an affront to free workers.

"Obviously, it doesn't do anything for the labor market here," said
University of Oregon political science professor Gordon Lafer, author of a study on
prison labor.

"It's like bringing little islands of the Third World right here to the
heartland of America," he said. "You get the same total control of the work force,
the same low wages, and it does nothing for the inmates."

Also, convicts don't benefit much from training for jobs that no longer exist
in America because they have all gone overseas or into prisons, he said.

Harry said he is thankful for the skills he has learned in prison, and
intends to attend college when he is released. He kicked back in his cubicle and
bantered about the weather with a customer in Houston.

"I've been here three months," he said. "Nobody's ever suspected they're
talking to a convict."

02/25/04 03:11 EST

=======================================

Wirt Atmar

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *