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Outsourcing Unit To Be Set Up In Indian Jail
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.
$.25 an hour x 8 hours a day=$2 a day
Seems fairly competitive to me...
I would imagine a certain degree of integrity is required to handle third-party data. While it may not be a fair assumption, it is possible that some people involved with such a program may not be the most reliable of people...
Are they going to be careful about what kind of data they would be sharing with these inmates? Are there going to be restrictions in place to stop them from copying this data?
Will they be genuinely interested in what the weather is like where I am?
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."
Your data will be VERY safe when you hand it to those prisoners...
And India, Too! We can't leave a slave-gap open, with the Reds in China!
My Dear God. The world is back into nightmares decried by Dickens and Sinclair Lewis. If you haven't read these, I would suggest doing so. In fact, if you have, a refresh is in order.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Radiant: we're a little short on staff -- think you could raise the penalty for jaywalking?
Congressman: can do!
I understand their desire to remain relevant and competitive in the out-sourcing marketplace, but dang man, enough is enough.
Seriously. This will probably sound racist as hell, but whatever, I don't care. I'm sick to death of calling into some company for support and struggling mightily to understand the person on the other end. Sick of it. It does not do these companies any good at all to have such unpleasant customer service experiences.
I realize that English is not these folks primary language, and for it being ESL for them, they do a good job. But when I call in for support to a company "based in the US", damnit, I expect to hear a US voice.
Again, call me racist, whatever you want. I really don't give a shit at this point, I'm frigging sick of it. For companies that outsource to these places to "lower costs", you're also lowering profit, due to craptastic customer service, lack of caring, and a strict adherence to "following the script".
Sent from your iPad.
Seems to paint the picture of a very Dickensian universe, the one exception of debtor's prison. Step 1: Inmates work for free/cheap Step 2: People with regular jobs lose those jobs Step 3: People go to debtor's prison, have to work for free/cheap Step 4: Permanent lower-class The only exception is that, now, there's even more of a stigma towards people who have spent time in jail, and it's easier for employers to find out.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
I thought that some American Catalog companies were running call-centers with inmates as well in the mid '90's. Is this really new?
The feds have NO interest whatsoever in providing skill training, no matter what their propaganda tells you. At the FCI where I was, inmates typically slept till lunch, signed false pay sheets claiming 40 hours worked. They thought they were getting over, but it's actualy the feds, who can provide "proof" of "gainfully employed inmates."
But it's a scam. The BOP/DOJ has a vested interest in the 75% recidivism rate...it keeps the beds full and the $30,000 a year per inmate flowing nicely. Most inmates sleep till lunch, play basketball or softball in the afternoon, and watch TV and gamble all night.
Look, my unit had nine televisions (big flat screens, full cable, Netflix movies twice a week) and four toilets for 150 guys. Total in the facility? 1,800 inmates in regular population housed in 6 units, with a total of 48 toilets and 108 televisions. What's wrong with this picture?
Skills training my ass. Try getting a job with nothing on your resume but "data entry and basic Office." And that's for the tech/UNICOR jobs! It's like a health club..once they have you, they want you to keep coming back. Again and again. No skills? You're probably going to reoffend.
Step 3: Profit!
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
Let's see $2.20 a day * 260 days a year (although I doubt they give them too many days off)
= $572 bucks a year
Let's plug it in The Global Rich list....
http://www.globalrichlist.com/
= 4,429,714,286
You are the 4,429,714,286 richest person in the world!
You're in the TOP 73.82% richest people in the world!
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."
*Sigh*
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
LOL.."peddling pot" does not get you into the feds unless you have 50,000 pounds of it.
You seem to be yet another person that assumes what you learn from your tv education is immutable truth. Once again...3% of the world's population, 25% of its prison inmates. Do you not understand this? Do you really think the US is a nation of felons?
I'm not looking for, or interested in your, or anyone else's fucking sympathy. I'm trying to tell you to wake up, and watch out for yourself.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
The feds have NO interest whatsoever in providing skill training, no matter what their propaganda tells you. At the FCI where I was, inmates typically slept till lunch, signed false pay sheets claiming 40 hours worked. They thought they were getting over, but it's actualy the feds, who can provide "proof" of "gainfully employed inmates."
But it's a scam. The BOP/DOJ has a vested interest in the 75% recidivism rate...it keeps the beds full and the $30,000 a year per inmate flowing nicely. Most inmates sleep till lunch, play basketball or softball in the afternoon, and watch TV and gamble all night.
Look, my unit had nine televisions (big flat screens, full cable, Netflix movies twice a week) and four toilets for 150 guys. Total in the facility? 1,800 inmates in regular population housed in 6 units, with a total of 48 toilets and 108 televisions. What's wrong with this picture?
Skills training my ass. Try getting a job with nothing on your resume but "data entry and basic Office." And that's for the tech/UNICOR jobs! It's like a health club..once they have you, they want you to keep coming back. Again and again. No skills? You're probably going to reoffend.
Step 3: Profit!
That's what happens when state and federal governments contract out such a basic thing as their prison systems. To the government and government-run prisons, prisoners are nothing but an expense so the fewer, the better. To the private companies, each prisoner represents profit so the more the merrier.
Certainly I can understand the government buying items on the open market such as automobiles, ships, airplanes, office stationery, electricity, etc. I hardly expect them to mine their own ore, smelt it, forge it, and make their own products, to run their own paper mills, or maintain their own electrical grids. Yet a line does need to be drawn someplace because things like prisons are rightly an unwanted expense. I propose that the government can freely purchase any needed goods (including units of energy like kilowatt-hours) but must perform all services itself, carried out by individuals who are government employees.
No one should have a vested interest in a high recidivism rate, particularly not when large sums of money are involved. It does not serve society's interests. Further, I bet they're fine with high recidivism until a crime happens to them. Any such entity with vested interests like this is a parasite that feeds off the failing of others. These parasites are state-sponsored.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
No one should have a vested interest in a high recidivism rate, particularly not when large sums of money are involved. It does not serve society's interests. Further, I bet they're fine with high recidivism until a crime happens to them. Any such entity with vested interests like this is a parasite that feeds off the failing of others. These parasites are state-sponsored.
If the government was interested in a low recidivism rate, they would reward facilities for it. Look at averages for rates of return, and reward facilities that turn out better than that. As an example, if the average for a certain type of criminal is to have a 50% recidivism rate within 5 years, track the ex-prisoners, and give an actual cash award to the prison if they average 40% over 6 years. This opens the whole system back up to the private sector to resolve.
There would also be room in this environment for penalties for significantly worse than average results, where "significantly worse" is something I'm not defining here. There would be other changes likely also required (such as the inability to turn down a prisoner for anything other than overcrowding issues, so they don't bias their population only with those they think won't reoffend in the first place). I'm sure that if lowering the recidivism rate was really on any elected official's radar, it could be solved without socialising the industry.
There are some commons that I do think the government should not privatise. I also think that conflicts of interest need to be resolved (and, in the public sphere, I would generally also like to see appearances of conflicts of interest to be eliminated as well). However, I prefer to go for solutions with the smallest amount of delta to the status quo. Some people call that "conservative" (with a small "c"). I prefer to call it "the scientific method" - by reducing the delta to as small as possible to effect the change, we can be sure as to what we can attribute the change to, so others can replicate that success, or not duplicate that failure. Grand social experiments, I'm not so fond of. And, yes, it can be argued that privatising the prison industry was a grand social experiment. I wouldn't disagree. However, that's where the Americans are at the moment, so that's where you have to work from.
Wait a minute. My cubicle feels like a cell. My wardrobe is defined by Corporate Goons. At the whim of a bureaucrat, I can be sent, against my will, anywhere in the country. Many time's, I've been awakened in the middle of the night by alarms and screaming. (Usually, the voices are saying things like, "The servers are down!" or "My Email is gone!") Have I been in prison all along? That would explain some of the meetings... Well, no more! There's no cage that can hold me! I'm bustin' outta here. Here's the plan. Just after the morning scrum meeting, you throw a paper airplane to distract the guard. I'll slip under the raised floor. I've got a plastic spoon from the break room, so I'll dig a tunnel. If we do this every day for the next 40 - 50 years, we'll make it out!
After exhaustive research and excrutiating analysis, I've determined that Bubba is, in fact, everywhere.
Intentionally taking out of context and twisting your words here:
Once again...3% of the world's population, 25% of its prison inmates. Do you not understand this? Do you really think the US is a nation of felons?
Well since the numbers seem to bear that out, yes. Obviously since you are one too I will believe what you say about that and take it as truth ;)
though I always thought Australia was the nation of felons...
Back in reality, yes our system is fscked up like no other. I really wish for three things:
1) put back the support structure (mental health, training, etc.) that we used to have in prisons before privatization.
2) put the prison system back under federal control (not outsourced to private companies)
3) a pony.
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IMHO, any felon should be stripped of their MCSE, or any other IT or engineering certification, and not allowed to get another for at least 10 years after release ... 10 years of scraping sidewalks on the outside!
And you'll ensure that people who offend will go on to reoffend, and your precious tax dollars will go to keeping them locked up and and a net cost to everyone (instead of using that MCSE to stay out of jail, pay taxes and make the world a better place).
The single worst thing you can do to encourage someone to go straight is to remove hope that they can improve their lot. Hey, if you just got out and your lot was to scrape sidewalks while also dealing with the stress of caring for yourself with no hope of improving things, why the hell not reoffend. If you don't get away with it, your job doesn't suck any less and you don't have to worry about rent, and your life is already ruined, so fuck it.
It boggles the mind that some folks are so completely stupid about things like this the minute the word 'criminal' is uttered. And that's before we get to all of the inequities of our criminal justice system and the institutionalized perverse incentives _not_ having to do with Skapare's apparent personal interest in wasting human capital, increasing misery and wasting their tax money in order to keep people from earning an honest living.
I forget what 8 was for.
such as prison for marijuana use: that's stupid
however, i'm kind of sick of this tired line: "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"
the reason i'm sick of this line is that other countries aren't going "oh my gosh, what is wrong with the usa! so many people are in prison there!"
what those other people in other countries are saying is "man i'm thick of these thieves and murderers running around free. we need to crack down in these elements ruining our society"
in other words, other countries aren't bemoaning our high prison rates, they're bemoaning the thieves getting away scott free in their own country. high prison populations aren't necessarily a bad thing, assuming the laws make sense. it could just mean you have an efficient police and judicial system (relatively speaking), catching more crooks
lower prison populations in other countries in other words, isn't some sign of tolerance or enlightenment, its a sign of a corrupt and inefficient police/ judiciary. in those other countries with lower prison populations, you are simply talking about more assholes getting away with robbery and murder and walking around free
other people in other countries are actually envying the usa's high incarceration rate
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
(things like Prison Break and The Anarchist's Cookbook would be off the menu for sure)
Maybe the second one, but really, Prison Break. Do you really think that escape plan would work in real life?
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
TV or toilet, who cares? The only difference is the direction of shit. With toilets, it goes in, with TVs, it comes out.
Horseshit. Your very first post was whining for sympathy because they made you work rather than giving you a cushy job because of your MCSE.
Really? Where did I "whine?" I only mentioned the BOP did not consider skills when assigning jobs. Actually, I had no interest in working for UNICOR. I worked less than 5 minutes a day for my $5.25 a month. UNICOR slaves work 6 - 8 hour days for their $.40 an hour. My point was almost NO ONE really works in a fed prison. Learn to read, hmm?
And, FTR, I haven't used any knowledge from my MCSE in many, many years. Rather pointless nowadays.
Then you whined for sympathy because you "didn't fully deserve to be there" and because "you weren't treated fairly". (I take both with a huge grain of salt because virtually every ex con I know says the same thing.)
Exactly where did I say "I didn't fully deserve to be there?" Or that "I wasn't treated fairly?" Show me the quote from this thread, mmkay? The system is fucked up, indeed, but you are simply making shit up, for whatever reason I cannot fathom.
And I suspect you know very few (if any) ex-cons. Otherwise you would have a tiny understanding of the system, which you clearly do not have.
Why so angry?
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."