Call centres recruit US prisoners

aware that their phone calls to various private and public company's are being answered by inmates, The Inquisitr reveals.

In fact, the programmes have been so successful that prisons have suddenly been turned into cash centres, earning millions of dollars per year in revenue while caring for inmates.

One such programme, in New York, has prisoners from the Greene Correctional Institution or the Bedford Hills prison for women answer calls for the Department of Motor Vehicles. That programme, staffed by a long-running federal programme, called Unicor, is just one example of the programme's reach.

The federal government calls it “the best kept secret in outsourcing” - providing inmates to staff call centres and other services in both the private and public sectors, US News says.

The US government, through a 75-year-old programme, called Federal Prison Industries, makes about $750 million a year providing prison labour, federal records show.

The great majority of those contracts are with other federal agencies for services as diverse as laundry, construction, data conversion and manufacture of emergency equipment.

The programme also works with the business world, Newser writes. In Arizona, for example, the state prison system partners with a company that provides marketing services for companies such as Microsoft and Hitachi.

Unicor made about $10 million in the first six months of fiscal 2011, and all the money goes back into the programme.

Advocates say it gives inmates job skills and makes them less likely to return to prison.