Actually, It Is A Crook On The Phone

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By Newsweek Editors

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HELP WANTED: Call-center employees who are willing to work at below-market wages." Think we're talking about outsourcing to India? Not this time. Try Oregon. Behind bars. And these days, with wages between 12 cents and $5.69 an hour nationwide, it's a bargain many companies are considering. Prison jobs are nothing new--but lately corrections departments have been actively scouting companies that were set to move abroad. "This is where the prison industry can have a positive impact on the U.S. economy," says Rob Killgore, director of Inside Oregon Enterprises, the quasi-state agency that recruits business to prisons.

While corrections officials have long praised work programs for lowering recidivism and teaching inmates skills and self-respect, they still get criticized by unions. But, Killgore points out, those concerns don't matter if a company was ready to move offshore anyway. Ten states, including Oregon, employ inmates in for-profit call centers. Often they're telemarketers, but states like Arizona use them to answer such government hot lines as the DMV. Oregon and others also make garments and furniture. The number of inmates in the private sector is still small: about 10,000 working for about 250 companies. But that's up from a handful just 10 years ago. "To us, the choice was simple," says Ronna Newton, a telemarketing manager whose company uses the Oregon facility. "Support America or not. We know we made the right choice."

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