Inmates help industry stay home – Call centers use prison work force to avoid moving offshore

Chris Harry is a model employee for the call center industry in America.

The 25-year-old dresses in a button-down blue denim shirt, arrives promptly at his cubicle, speaks courteously on the phone and considers his job a step up.

Andrew Kramer
Associated Press

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=022204&ID=s1489927&cat=section.business

"Hello, this is Chris. I’m with quality control marketing. How are you today?" he begins his calls.

He is never late, never absent and never takes a vacation. 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 the convicted robber. "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 America rather than join a host of telemarketing companies moving offshore. Perry Johnson had intended to move to India.

The company chose instead to open inside the Snake River Correctional Institution, a sprawling razor wire and cinder block state penitentiary in a sagebrush field 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.

"Repatriation is the big buzz word right now in prison industries," said Carol Martindale-Taylor, spokeswoman for the Baltimore, Md.-based group National Correctional Industries Association.

Ten states including Oregon employ inmates in for-profit call centers, while Oregon and many others 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. At the Airway Heights Corrections Center, in Spokane, some 1,200 inmates work in a range of jobs, including upholstery, computer refurbishing, and concrete casting.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., introduced a bill in 2003 that would exempt federal prison industries, which sell under the brand name Unicor, from a Depression-era ban on interstate trade in prison-manufactured goods – as long as those sectors are at risk of losing jobs overseas.

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.

One benefit is low turnover among inmate employees. Short of escape, they have few options.

"They’re looking for the quality of work they get overseas, where turnover is typically not so high," Reagan said.

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 ensure convicts don’t make personal calls or do anything illegal by randomly monitoring the phone conversations. Also, all calls are digitally recorded so authorities can go back later and review what was said.

As another security measure, convicts place calls by clicking a company name on their computer screens; they cannot punch in numbers on their own.

The cons work 40-hour weeks in rows of nondescript cubicles. Rather than family pictures, each cubicle is adorned with a mug shot – so guards can ensure inmates are sitting in their assigned seats. The walls to the office bathroom are clear plexiglass – so guards can keep an eye on call center employees at all times.

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

"It’s kind of a cynical joke," said University of Oregon political science professor Gordon Lafer, author of a study on prison labor.

"Obviously, it doesn’t do anything for the labor market here. 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.

Canada bans goods made in prisons in America, which has the world’s largest incarcerated population at about 2 million people behind bars. Incarcerated workers comprise just over one-half of 1 percent of the U.S. workforce.

In 1996, Harry pulled a pistol grip shotgun during a robbery in Eugene and was sentenced to 10 years and eight months in the state penitentiary under Oregon’s minimum sentencing rules. He said he is thankful for the skills he has learned in prison, and intends to attend college when he is released.

In the meantime, he can use his earnings to buy candy, toiletries and brand-name sneakers at the prison canteen, and saves up for when he will get out.

"I don’t agree with these jobs going overseas," Harry said. "Even though we’re inmates, we’re still Americans. We’re still keeping the business in America."

He kicked back in his cubicle and folded his hands behind his head and talked into a headset. He 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."