Outsourcing Unit To Be Set Up In Indian Jail 249
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.
sensitive data? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Slavery in America Today (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
scary thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Congressman: can do!
Re:25 cents? Not in the feds... (Score:1, Insightful)
You were in fucking prison. Don't expect any concessions though. If you felt that bad, you shouldn't have gone to prison in first place.
Re:25 cents? Not in the feds... (Score:5, Insightful)
Prison. Where they teach you that honest hard labour gets you next to nothing.
Trying to remain "competitive" I guess... (Score:3, Insightful)
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".
Re:sensitive data? (Score:3, Insightful)
RTFA: banking information. What could possibly go wrong?
Still No Debtor's Prison (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Skills... (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Competitive... (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFA:
Poster asks:
If they do it right, they'll be able to BUY their way out of jail.
People will be breaking INTO jail to better do identity theft.
Re:Here's the world's smallest violin... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Skills... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:25 cents? Not in the feds... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Skills... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Here's the world's smallest violin... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:25 cents? Not in the feds... (Score:0, Insightful)
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.
Might have something to do with the Chinese policy of keeping the prison population low by the simple expedient of taking a fair number of their convicts outside and shooting them.
Because punishment should never stop (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Inmates watching TV all day is better then them (Score:3, Insightful)
(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?
Re:Skills... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:25 cents? Not in the feds... (Score:3, Insightful)
The tone and substance of your reply tacitly admits that you deserved to be there (even if not 'fully').
So yeah, the GP is right - if you didn't want to go to prison, you shouldn't have done whatever it was that put you there. And when you did go there, you should have expected to be treated as a prisoner not as something 'special' because you have a dime-a-dozen MCSE.
Re:plenty of crimes aren't crimes (Score:2, Insightful)
cheers from europe.
Indeed.
http://blog.ju29ro.com/uploaded_images/hooligans-reuters-735894.jpg [ju29ro.com]
http://www.ilga-europe.org/var/ilga/storage/images/europe/photo_galleries/budapest_pride_5_july_2008/budapest_pride_2008_hooligans__5/70616-1-eng-GB/budapest_pride_2008_hooligans.jpg [ilga-europe.org]
http://www.awitness.org/eden2003/kosovogenlg.jpg [awitness.org]
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/images/paris_riots_day_9.jpg [typepad.com]