Companies finding skilled employees behind bars
Copyright © 1998 Nando.net
Copyright © 1998 The Associated Press
MARIETTA, Ga. (October 18, 1998 11:03 a.m. EDT
nandotimes.com) -- Like many Americans who
have in-demand work skills, Lee Gibbs didn't have to
go looking for a job -- employers sought him out. And
he was easy to find.
After completing a seven-year drug sentence at a
state prison in Lockhart, Texas, Gibbs walked out
with more than the traditional $50 and a bus ticket.
He had $8,000 in a bank account, expertise in
electronic component boards and a new job starting
at more than $30,000 a year.
"They were calling me, offering me jobs even before I
got out," said Gibbs, freed from prison over the
summer. "With the money I had saved, I was able to
get a vehicle, buy clothes for work, pay the first and
last month's rent on an apartment (and) put down a
telephone deposit."
Gibbs, 30, became marketable through a prison
work program run by a Marietta-based company,
U.S. Technologies, with subsidiaries that use prison
inmates for outsourcing contracts with private
companies.
With more Americans than ever behind bars and
businesses shopping for workers from a tight labor
pool, there is renewed debate over the pros and
cons of having "cons" contributing to free-market
enterprises.
For most of this century, prison work programs have
been sharply restricted by concerns about unfair
competition and use of inmates as "slave labor,"
along with questions about whether criminals
deserve to receive training, pay and job experience.
However, the programs "can be such a force for
good," U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno said last
May. Wages can go to victims' restitution funds,
prison recidivism might be reduced, and there could
be "another engine" for the national economy.
At the Liberty Correctional Institution in Bristol, Fla.,
Michael Provence will soon be eligible for parole
after serving 25 years for murder in "a drug deal that
went bad." After spending years doing menial tasks
like making mess-hall tables, he now does
computer-assisted drafting and mapping.
Facing the outside world isn't as worrisome as it
would have been "if I had been isolated from
technology the last 25 years," said Provence, who
expects to have little problem finding work.
"For a lot of these people, this is the first job they've
held," said Ken Smith, chief executive officer of U.S.
Technologies. "They learn work habits. They have to
get up, shower and shave and show up for work on
time, they have to show initiative, they have to meet
goals, they have to stay out of trouble.
"It creates self-respect and gives them a work ethic,
and then when they get out and the drug lord says,
'Glad to see you, I've got a job for you,' they say no."
In Florida, PRIDE Enterprises, a nonprofit company
that started in 1985 training and employing prison
inmates to perform useful jobs with a goal of reducing
prison recidivism, employs 4,000 inmates in 51
operations. Their jobs range from making
eyeglasses to data entry.
Pam Davis, its president, says studies show that less
than 13 percent of the organization's inmate workers
landed back in prison, compared to a national rate of
about 60 percent.
With more people in prison longer because of
tougher sentencing laws, inmate work programs
could be an important component of the economy.
"Part of our resources are the million or so people in
prison," Davis said. "We've got to use them in
creative ways; consider this as a viable labor source
rather than sending jobs offshore."
Such programs are popular with prison officials who
see them as a way to reduce idleness that leads to
problems.
"That's 200 inmates that are not just slogging around
on the compound," Russell Smith, assistant
superintendent at Liberty Correctional, said of the
PRIDE operation there.
But only a fraction of the nation's estimated 1.5
million prisoners work in such programs, and efforts
to expand often run into opposition.
"It's hard for me to accept that the government would
put the welfare and benefit of convicted felons above
the interests of its taxpayers," said Tim Graves, a
Marietta man who said his 100-employee company
was forced out of business after 18 years when the
government-run Federal Prison Industries took over
contracts to produce missile shipping containers.
Companies such as PRIDE and U.S. Technologies
are trying to find ways businesses can use inmates
without threatening American jobs.
At one PRIDE project at Bristol, prisoners are
digitally mapping records of a European utility
company that contracted with St. Petersburg,
Fla.-based Geonex to perform the time-consuming
work. Ken Mellem, who heads Geonex, said the
contractor had suggested the work be done
overseas.
While inmate labor may cost more than offshore
work, Mellem said, it offers advantages because the
workers are within a few hours' drive of his company.
Smith, with expertise in turning around troubled
companies, took over U.S. Technologies last year
with a vision of using inmates to fill the rising demand
for outsourcing work. His fast-growing company now
is involved in running or setting up operations in
prisons in Texas, California, Utah and Florida.
He finds prison workers highly motivated and
responsible, as well as less expensive to hire.
But, Smith recounted, there are drawbacks that don't
come up in the normal business world. Sitting in an
office last year during a visit to the Lockhart prison,
he suddenly noticed "deathly quiet." He looked up to
see he was the only person left in the building.
There had been a prison escape, and his entire work
force had been returned to their cells for a temporary
lockdown.
By DAN SEWELL, AP Business Writer
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