Prison Labor: Outsourcing's "Best Kept Secret" [View All]

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Prison Labor: Outsourcing's "Best Kept Secret"

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/052710-prison-labor-outsourcings-best-kept.html?page=1
Meanwhile, in the U.S., prisoners have been handling a variety of business services for private corporations since 1999. In 2002, they began taking on call center work. Nearly 1,100 inmates locked up in eight federal prisons from Dublin, Calif. to Morgantown, West Va. man tier-one help desks, handle outbound business-to-business calls, and provide directory assistance for Federal Prison Industries (FPI).

For private sector customers outsourcing their call centers to FPI, which operates under the trade name UNICOR, the price is right. Employees behind bars earn an average of 92 cents an hour to man the phones.

UNICOR says prison labor is a low-cost alternative to offshore outsourcing. Its customers either want to repatriate work previously done in India or another low-cost locale, or contract with UNICOR in lieu of an offshore provider, says UNICOR Public Information Officer Julie Rozier.

Callers are unaware that the person on the other end of the line is in jail, says Rozier. And the call center workers, nearly 90 percent of whom are female (male prisoners tend not to volunteer for phone work, according to Rozier), do not deal with any personal identifying information or classified data about the customers they're servicing.

UNICOR bills its services business group, which also provides distribution and order fulfillment, document conversion, and printing and design services, as "the best kept secret in outsourcing."

Fed Bill Would Allow More, and Cheaper, Prison Labor

http://baltimorechronicle.com/prison_labor_jun00.html

MAJOR NEWSPAPERS, The Sun included, have devoted much space to diatribes against Chinese industry’s use of prison labor. Coverage of prison labor in America, however, is sparse and superficial.

Yet private industries’ subcontracting of manufacturing and service work to state prison agencies has almost imperceptibly become big business in the U.S., and new proposed federal legislation, if passed, will add federal prisons to the mix.

Wisconsin, Oregon, California, Tennessee, Kansas, Ohio, Nevada and Texas have been in the forefront of offering state prison labor to private industry. Some states are promoting their prison labor force to industry as an alternative to taking jobs overseas for cheap labor.

Prisoners are being employed as data entry clerks, telemarketers, circuit board assemblers, furniture or clothing makers, and order-takers, among other jobs. In a report published by the National Institute of Justice, Jeff Black, TWA’s director of area reservations, is quoted as saying, “We know that are not going to be late for work because of a traffic jam on the freeway. That kind of dependability is important to us.”

Prisoners do not retain all their earnings; fiscal arrangements differ from state to state. After federal and state taxes are withheld, somewhere between 41% and 80% of a prisoner’s wages is applied toward costs of incarceration; the balance may go toward support for prisoners’ families, victim compensation, prisoner “allowance,” and/or a savings account for the prisoner to access when leaving prison. The “allowance” is becoming more important as some state prison systems, strapped for cash, are requiring prisoners to make co-payments for medical care and prescriptions; in the state of Washington, prisoners are even charged a $10 UPS delivery fee to ship their belongings when they are transferred from one facility to another.

The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8289
Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million - mostly Black and Hispanic - are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don't have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don't like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, "no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens." The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world's prison population, but only 5% of the world's people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.

What has happened over the last 10 years? Why are there so many prisoners?

"The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners' work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself," says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being "an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps."

The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. "This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors."

New 'Prison Valley' Shockumentary Offers Rare Window into Growing Industry

http://www.oneworldmanypeaces.com/one_world_many_peaces/2010/04/new-prison-valley-shockumentary-offers-rare-window-documentary-film-michel-foucault-panopticon.html
If you're looking for what may become the next big shockumentary, here it: Prison Valley, directed by David Dufresne and Philippe Brault and produced by Alexandre Brachet, the group who also brought us the critically acclaimed Gaza/Sderot. Certainly not for the weak at heart or mind, the much-anticipated film (at least in certain circles) is sure to make a stir and cause long-term trouble for the blooming American prison industry. It's slogan could be: One town, thirteen prisons. Terrible but true.
The film, which will be featured at this year's International Documentary Film Festival (IDFF) in Amsterdam, is already raising eyebrows in France, where one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century, Michel Foucault, made the study of prisons into a full-fledged activist discipline aimed at changing, and even perhaps eliminating, them. At least as we know them today, which is the focus of the film, revolving around the prison industry that for the most part sustains the 36,000 inhabitants of Fremont Country, Colorado, and contains the lives of more than 7,000 inmates, mostly African-American men.

"Using the Riviera Motel as the base of operations, the visitor moves around Prison Valley to investigate the background of the prison industry," the IDFF reports. "Along the way, he or she meets the people involved, including the sheriff, a journalist, and a prison guard. But the visitor is never alone, because other visitors are always "visible," and at various points in the story all the visitors and those affiliated with the industry can access "interactive zones." Foucault's famous analysis of the panopticon, social media style.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, as is well known, is among America's biggest investors in the prison system (perhaps trying to extend his successful hair-splitting legalist international record at home?). He won't like this movie. Depending on what your views on the current prison system in the U.S. are, the film could be very good or very bad news, but nothing in between. A trailer of the film is available here.

List of countries by incarceration rate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
Yay, we're #1!!!
By a hell of a lot! US= 760 per 100,000; UK = 83; France = 96; Germany = 88; Japan = 63