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Outsourcing Unit To Be Set Up In Indian Jail

Posted by samzenpus on from the you'll-love-the-benefits-package dept.

littlekorea writes "Indian outsourcing firm Radiant Info Systems has found yet another way to lower wages — hiring data entry clerks from a local prison. Some 200 inmates will be paid $2.20 a day to handle manual data entry tasks for Radiant's BPO deals in a pilot for the scheme. Radiant execs told the BBC that the deal will provide skills to inmates when they are released from prison. No doubt they would also be due for a pay raise." They're going to need to cut wages if they want to be competitive with the 100,000 US prisoners who work for 25 cents an hour.

10 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Competitive... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    $.25 an hour x 8 hours a day=$2 a day

    Seems fairly competitive to me...

  2. 25 cents? Not in the feds... by droopus · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just came home from a lovely four year stay at a fed prison. Yes, you can eventually make $.25 an hour, but you have to work up to that.

    See federal (BOP) pay scales here.

    FPI (UNICOR) is the prison industries. Read: slave labor for government profit. At the facility I was at there was a data processing factory, fixing bad OCR scans by entering Postscript commands.

    However, anyone with any computer skills was forbidden from working there, so my job was Captain's Crew...cleaning the sidealks for half hour every day. Nice use of my MCSE, no?

    --
    "The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
    1. Re:25 cents? Not in the feds... by droopus · · Score: 5, Informative

      Uh huh. And everyone that ends up in prison:

      A) Deserves fully to be there, and

      B) Was treated fairly and justly by the US Justice system.

      No disrespect intended at all, but you have much to learn. I hope your lesson isn't as difficult as mine was. The justice system in this country is insane and grossly unfair.

      The US has 3% of the world's population and 25% of it's prison population. Numerically and per capita, we have the highest prison population on the planet...and that includes China..a tougher regime that is three times our size.

      --
      "The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
    2. Re:25 cents? Not in the feds... by droopus · · Score: 5, Informative

      Only from people who actually believe what they see on TV. Prison can be very violent, but that stupid "don't bend over for the soap" stuff doesn't happen. In fact, even suggesting it is a good way to get shanked.

      CSI, Law and Order, Prison Break, etc are utter propaganda.

      --
      "The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
    3. Re:25 cents? Not in the feds... by Itninja · · Score: 2, Informative

      So how many times in that 4 years did you have to pay for rent, food, clothes, medical care, dental care, etc.? I think if you take all that into account, it far exceeds minimum wage. A good friend of mine spent 10 years in prison and commented shortly after his release that his standard of living was higher while inside.

      --
      I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
    4. Re:25 cents? Not in the feds... by elrous0 · · Score: 3, Informative

      You think this hasn't been done already? In the South, local sheriffs used to do this all the time (and still do in many places). Every year around harvest time for tobacco or cotton, they would go around and round up all the local drunkards/ne'r-do-wells/etc. and throw them in jail for whatever. Then they would hire them out as work gangs to local farmers, with the sheriff pocketing almost all of the money. The work gangs that a lot of Southern jails and prisons still use today are, in fact, just a historical extension of the old antebellum slave gangs. They even have the same structure (4-7 slaves and one overseer). They're great for shitty manual labor jobs (you can get them for about $1 an hour per prisoner/slave, even cheaper than hiring illegals).

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  3. US Prisons by FozE_Bear · · Score: 3, Informative

    I thought that some American Catalog companies were running call-centers with inmates as well in the mid '90's. Is this really new?

  4. Re:scary thought by TheRon6 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Radiant: we're a little short on staff -- think you could raise the penalty for jaywalking?

    Congressman: can do!

    This exact sort of thing is already happening in the U.S. except rather than keeping people in prison to make them work, the prison lobby wants to keep people in prison for the sake of needing to build more prisons. We've got both the prisons' investors and prison guard unions constantly lobbying for harsher punishments for lesser offenses. It's a scary to think that it's profitable for anyone to lock people up and throw away the key...

    --
    Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?
  5. Re:Skills...and a sat image of FCI Elkton! by droopus · · Score: 2, Informative

    Oh, before anyone comments on the math:

    Each unit (building) was made up of two sub-units. Four toilets per sub-unit, 8 per unit.

    Wanna see the place?

    --
    "The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
  6. Re:scary thought by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    We're already there. See War on Drug.

    also, judge(s) too.