http://www.main.nc.us/prisonbooks/whatdo.html
Check this page out. These people are great and they are trying to make sure the inmates get what they need as far as reading and education materials go.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Inmates vs. Outsourcing
By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY
ONTARIO, Ore. — David Day has a bounce in his step and a glint in his eye unexpected in someone who makes nearly 400 telemarketing calls a day for less than $200 a month. That's because he has a coveted job where few exist: behind bars.
Day, 43, is one of 85 inmates who arrange business meetings from a call center at the Snake River Correctional Institution, a state penitentiary in this onion- and potato-producing town not far from the Idaho line. "I'm grateful for the opportunity. Many of us end up here because we didn't have jobs and lacked communications skills," he says on a recent morning, ponytail cascading down his state-issued denims.
If not for consulting firm Perry Johnson's aversion to moving jobs offshore, Day, who was convicted of assault, and his cellmates wouldn't be working.
About a dozen states — Oregon, Arizona, California and Iowa, among others — have call centers in state and federal prisons, underscoring a push to employ inmates in telemarketing jobs that might otherwise go to low-wage countries such as India and the Philippines. Arizona prisoners make business calls, as do inmates in Oklahoma. A call center for the DMV is run out of an all-female prison in Oregon. Other companies are keeping manufacturing jobs in the USA. More than 150 inmates in a Virginia federal prison build car parts for Delco Remy International. Previously, some of those jobs were overseas.
At least 2,000 inmates nationwide work in call centers, and that number is rising as companies seek cheap labor without incurring the wrath of politicians and unions. At the same time, prison populations are ballooning, offering U.S. companies another way to slash costs.
"Prisons are prime candidates for low-skill jobs," says Sasha Costanza-Chock, a University of Pennsylvania graduate who last year completed a thesis on call centers at U.S. prisons.
Market conditions seem to favor prisons. After declining for years, call-center jobs in the USA increased several hundred, to about 360,000, last year. At the same time, more white-collar jobs are going offshore than researchers originally thought. About 830,000 U.S. service-sector jobs, from telemarketers to software engineers, will move abroad by the end of 2005, up 41% from previous predictions, says Forrester Research.
About 3.5% of the 2.1 million prisoners in the USA produced goods and services worth an estimated $1.5 billion in 2002.
But the convicted workforce elicits as much dread as interest. Companies flinch at the prospect of a public-relations backlash should news leak out that they employ hardened criminals. Union representatives, meanwhile, call the hiring of prisoners a flagrant violation of minimum-wage laws and unfair competition to free workers.
"Quite literally, they're taking advantage of a captive audience," says Tony Daley, research economist for the Communications Workers of America, which represents 700,000 people nationwide.
To read this article in it's entirety please visit //www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2004-07-06-call-center_x.htm
Friday, April 23, 2010
The USA has more incarcerated than anywhere else.
According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College in London, the US has 700,000 more of its citizens incarcerated than China, a country with a population four to five times larger than that of the US, and 1,330,000 more people in prison than crime-ridden Russia. The US has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. The American incarceration rate is seven times higher than that of European countries. Either America is the land of criminals, or something is seriously wrong with the criminal justice (sic) system in "the land of the free."
Monday, April 19, 2010
Prison Commissaries Gouge Inmates, Support Taxpayers BY: Frank F. Gullwhistle
Each of the Pennsylvania state prisons has a little store or commissary in which prisoners who have the money are permitted to buy a few items. The prison commissary is a company store. The prisoner may not buy from any other source and she or he must pay whatever the commissary decides to charge.
In theory, the prison commissary is operated for the benefit of the Inmate General Welfare Fund. The pretext is that the commissary makes only 5% profit and that the profit is used to benefit the prisoners themselves. As with everything involved with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections ("DOC"), it's a lie. For example, recently over a million dollars from the fund was siphoned off so that the DOC could buy into a television scheme for the guards to get college degrees.
The money which prisoners spend in the commissary, is either donated to them by their families and loved ones, or it's earned by the prisoner by doing menial labor within the prison. Prisoners are paid 19 cents per hour! The majority of prisoners are paid about 4 hours a day (76 cents), five days a week ($3.80). Some prisoners are paid a little more per hour and/or paid for more than four hours per day. In the calculations which I've used in this article, I took an average of 19 cents pay for 6 hours per day, or an income of $1.14 per day, $4.56 per week, $18.24 per month.
Since television cable service costs the inmate about $15 per month, it's obvious that $18.24 will not go very far. Many prisoners receive occasional donations from their families loved ones. In effect, loving families, almost all of whom are from the very most impoverished part of our society, support prisoners. The DOC has a specific strategy to wring as much money as possible out of the impoverished families. In many cases, it's the families' money which is spent in the prison commissaries.
Prisoners' families are already greatly overtaxed by the prison system. The telephone system alone is a racket which bleeds families for many millions of dollars each year. It's not just prisoners who are gypped in the prison commissaries, but also the families who generously try to support them. It's one of the state's more insidious schemes; to force poor people to support the prison system.
What's sold in a prison commissary is very limited and very expensive. It nets so much money for the prison system that the new prison television system has a "shopping channel" just to get money out of the prisoners. Everything from televisions sets and clothing to tobacco and food is sold in the commissary.
The prison system has for a century kept prisoners addicted to tobacco and then used the drug to manipulate the prisoners. At present, tobacco is withdrawn from the addict as part of the punishment meted out in the prison hole.
The food fed to prisoners in most of the prisons is VERY bad. At State Correctional Institution at Smithfield, for example, much of the food is simply unedible. On top of that, the culinary manager, Gary Scott, has pinched so many pennies and cut out so many foods that many prisoners simply don't have enough to eat. While guards get a taxpayer feast of prime crab meat, prisoners get oily noodles and red gravy. They have no choice except to try to feed themselves from the commissaryFoods, cosmetics and so forth, will be dealt with below. For now, consider a few of the other kinds of items sold in the commissary and the disgraceful way in which prisoners are gypped and cheated. For comparison sake, I've included a comparison to what we ordinary citizens pay "on the street," for similar items so you can see how badly prisoners are overcharged
http://www.prisoners.com/comm$$.html
In theory, the prison commissary is operated for the benefit of the Inmate General Welfare Fund. The pretext is that the commissary makes only 5% profit and that the profit is used to benefit the prisoners themselves. As with everything involved with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections ("DOC"), it's a lie. For example, recently over a million dollars from the fund was siphoned off so that the DOC could buy into a television scheme for the guards to get college degrees.
The money which prisoners spend in the commissary, is either donated to them by their families and loved ones, or it's earned by the prisoner by doing menial labor within the prison. Prisoners are paid 19 cents per hour! The majority of prisoners are paid about 4 hours a day (76 cents), five days a week ($3.80). Some prisoners are paid a little more per hour and/or paid for more than four hours per day. In the calculations which I've used in this article, I took an average of 19 cents pay for 6 hours per day, or an income of $1.14 per day, $4.56 per week, $18.24 per month.
Since television cable service costs the inmate about $15 per month, it's obvious that $18.24 will not go very far. Many prisoners receive occasional donations from their families loved ones. In effect, loving families, almost all of whom are from the very most impoverished part of our society, support prisoners. The DOC has a specific strategy to wring as much money as possible out of the impoverished families. In many cases, it's the families' money which is spent in the prison commissaries.
Prisoners' families are already greatly overtaxed by the prison system. The telephone system alone is a racket which bleeds families for many millions of dollars each year. It's not just prisoners who are gypped in the prison commissaries, but also the families who generously try to support them. It's one of the state's more insidious schemes; to force poor people to support the prison system.
What's sold in a prison commissary is very limited and very expensive. It nets so much money for the prison system that the new prison television system has a "shopping channel" just to get money out of the prisoners. Everything from televisions sets and clothing to tobacco and food is sold in the commissary.
The prison system has for a century kept prisoners addicted to tobacco and then used the drug to manipulate the prisoners. At present, tobacco is withdrawn from the addict as part of the punishment meted out in the prison hole.
The food fed to prisoners in most of the prisons is VERY bad. At State Correctional Institution at Smithfield, for example, much of the food is simply unedible. On top of that, the culinary manager, Gary Scott, has pinched so many pennies and cut out so many foods that many prisoners simply don't have enough to eat. While guards get a taxpayer feast of prime crab meat, prisoners get oily noodles and red gravy. They have no choice except to try to feed themselves from the commissaryFoods, cosmetics and so forth, will be dealt with below. For now, consider a few of the other kinds of items sold in the commissary and the disgraceful way in which prisoners are gypped and cheated. For comparison sake, I've included a comparison to what we ordinary citizens pay "on the street," for similar items so you can see how badly prisoners are overcharged
http://www.prisoners.com/comm$$.html
The Challenge of Mass Incarceration in America
The United States penal population has grown every year for the past thirty-six years. The rate of imprisonment in the United States is now four times its historic average and seven times higher than in Western Europe. Even more striking than the overall level of incarceration is the concentrated force of the penal system on the most disadvantaged segments of the population. One-third of African American male high-school dropouts under age 40 are currently behind bars. Among all African American men born since the mid-1960s, more than 20 percent will go to prison, nearly twice the number that will graduate college. This extraordinary pattern of penal confinement has been called “mass incarceration,” a rate of incarceration so high that it affects not only the individual offender, but also whole social groups.
Though largely invisible in public conversations about social inequality in America, mass incarceration is a growing issue at the federal, state, and local levels and threatens to undermine the most basic goals of the civil rights movement. This study is examining the scope of mass incarceration, its political and economic significance, and its social impact, weighing the concerns about crime control, rehabilitation, and more fundamental issues of social justice.
The Academy created this task force to develop increased understanding of this issue and to promote public discussion. Members of the task force will develop a forthcoming issue of Daedalus. The project will also sponsor a series of roundtable discussions, bringing together stakeholders who do not normally have an opportunity to gather, including representatives of the criminal justice community, policy makers, community activists, and practitioners working with formerly incarcerated individuals. These meetings will provide an opportunity for these groups to exchange ideas in a neutral setting and to learn from one another’s experiences.
The leaders will also be working with officials from the executive branch, state officials, as well as Congress as it takes up this policy matter.
Committee Members
Lawrence D. Bobo, Harvard UniversityHarold Clarke, Massachusetts Department of Corrections
David Garland, New York University
Marie Gottschalk, University of Pennsylvania
Mark A.R. Kleinman, University of California, Los Angeles
Candace Kruttschnitt, University of Toronto
Nicola Lacey, London School of Economics
Glenn Loury, Brown University (co-chair)
Glenn Martin, Fortune Society
Zachary Norris, Ella Baker Center
Joan Petersilia, Stanford University
Diane Williams, Safer Foundation
Robert Sampson, Harvard University
Dora Schriro, New York City Department of Corrections
Jonathan Simon, University of California, Berkeley
William Stuntz, Harvard Law School
Mindy Tarlow, Center for Employment Opportunities
Loïc Wacquant, University of California, Berkeley; Centre de Sociologie Européenne, Paris
Leonard Ward, New Jersey State Parole Board
Robert Weisberg, Stanford University
Bruce Western, Harvard University (co-chair)
Peter Young, Peter Young Housing, Industries and Treatment
Employment, livable wages and decriminalization.
Maybe if there were jobs in this country we would have less incarceration.
Maybe if the jobs actually paid a livable wage.
Maybe if we focused on living versus destruction.
Why do we have so many people living in cages? There's no jobs, no good paying jobs, and there's a million laws that somebody created to lock us up with. Once you're in it's hard to get out. Like my mother in law said " The system is designed for failure." That is coming from a retired special education teacher in Chester, Pa. her daughter is dead now from the broken system. It doesn't matter if you have a college education or not. Nothing really matters once you go to jail. They take everything. Did you know Marriot is the largest builder of prison facilities in America? These corporations have a vested interest in keeping the cages filled. They have people in Washington DC doing their business to create more laws to lock away more of us. They make millions off of people that are just trying to survive. I'm not promoting the sell of drugs or saying it is right but when there are no livable wage paying jobs left in the country what is a person supposed to do? There are thousands of people incarcerated because they sell drugs. Well, what about the government that brings them here? The drugs wouldn't be here if the government actually did not want them here. The whole damn thing is a set up!!!!
Maybe if the jobs actually paid a livable wage.
Maybe if we focused on living versus destruction.
Why do we have so many people living in cages? There's no jobs, no good paying jobs, and there's a million laws that somebody created to lock us up with. Once you're in it's hard to get out. Like my mother in law said " The system is designed for failure." That is coming from a retired special education teacher in Chester, Pa. her daughter is dead now from the broken system. It doesn't matter if you have a college education or not. Nothing really matters once you go to jail. They take everything. Did you know Marriot is the largest builder of prison facilities in America? These corporations have a vested interest in keeping the cages filled. They have people in Washington DC doing their business to create more laws to lock away more of us. They make millions off of people that are just trying to survive. I'm not promoting the sell of drugs or saying it is right but when there are no livable wage paying jobs left in the country what is a person supposed to do? There are thousands of people incarcerated because they sell drugs. Well, what about the government that brings them here? The drugs wouldn't be here if the government actually did not want them here. The whole damn thing is a set up!!!!
Prison Commissary Menu & Price List By: A. Williams
For many years the state prison at Frackville in Northeastern Pennsylvania had by far the worst commissary in the Commonwealth. It also had the worst administration and one of the worst staff of guards.
During that time, one of the men from the prison wrote about the "prison store" as it was and is commonly called. Mr. Hawkins, the article's author explained the workings of the monopoly and the prices.
Since first we published this article and commissary price list, there have been considerable changes in the system.
When Pennsylvania's Department of Imprisonment ("DOC") realized how much money it could gouge out of prisoners and the loved ones who support the prisoners, it formed a Money Grab.
A Money Grab is a Pennsylvania prison racket. It's a partnership between the DOC and greedy private vendors. In exchange for an unsavory monopoly, the private vendor kicks back a substantial "commission" (payoff) to the prison system and prison administrators.
The results of the Money Grab are MUCH higher prices and much worse service. Ultimately, the higher prices are paid by the families and loved one of the prisoners, among the most impoverished persons in the state.
In the case of the prison commissaries, the DOC granted a blanket monopoly to a firm using the nameKeefe out of Saint Louis, Missouri. In exchange for a huge kickback, the DOC gives Keefe prisoner slave labor to process their orders and staff assistance and protection for the vendor from having to observe proper business practices.
The days when the prison system provided essentials such as eatable means, underclothing and soap are long past in Pennsylvania. If a prisoner can't afford to buy junk food at the commissary, he/she goes hungry. If she/he can't afford to buy commissary socks and underpants, he/she must go without.
What follows is the now-current list of essentials sold by the Pennsylvania prison commissaries. In addition to what we show here, the commissaries also sell shoes and clothing.
In theory, the same things are available at each of the prisons. In practice, the women's prisons have a considerably different list and places such as Chester prison have a truncated list.
What we are reproducing are scans made from the January 2009 list. Prices are very quickly increased and products changed. TV sets, for example are constantly changed so that the DOC can maximize profits for Keefee and for itself.
During that time, one of the men from the prison wrote about the "prison store" as it was and is commonly called. Mr. Hawkins, the article's author explained the workings of the monopoly and the prices.
Since first we published this article and commissary price list, there have been considerable changes in the system.
When Pennsylvania's Department of Imprisonment ("DOC") realized how much money it could gouge out of prisoners and the loved ones who support the prisoners, it formed a Money Grab.
A Money Grab is a Pennsylvania prison racket. It's a partnership between the DOC and greedy private vendors. In exchange for an unsavory monopoly, the private vendor kicks back a substantial "commission" (payoff) to the prison system and prison administrators.
The results of the Money Grab are MUCH higher prices and much worse service. Ultimately, the higher prices are paid by the families and loved one of the prisoners, among the most impoverished persons in the state.
In the case of the prison commissaries, the DOC granted a blanket monopoly to a firm using the nameKeefe out of Saint Louis, Missouri. In exchange for a huge kickback, the DOC gives Keefe prisoner slave labor to process their orders and staff assistance and protection for the vendor from having to observe proper business practices.
The days when the prison system provided essentials such as eatable means, underclothing and soap are long past in Pennsylvania. If a prisoner can't afford to buy junk food at the commissary, he/she goes hungry. If she/he can't afford to buy commissary socks and underpants, he/she must go without.
What follows is the now-current list of essentials sold by the Pennsylvania prison commissaries. In addition to what we show here, the commissaries also sell shoes and clothing.
In theory, the same things are available at each of the prisons. In practice, the women's prisons have a considerably different list and places such as Chester prison have a truncated list.
What we are reproducing are scans made from the January 2009 list. Prices are very quickly increased and products changed. TV sets, for example are constantly changed so that the DOC can maximize profits for Keefee and for itself.
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