Abstract
This teaching case explores the business and ethics of prison sourcing, the practice of training and hiring prisoners to perform work for the private or public sectors. Although most prison employment programs train and hire workers for manual labor, such as furniture building or textiles, some prison employment programs now train and hire inmates to perform low-level Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services like call center work, data entry, and document preparation. Prison sourcing is highly controversial. Besides the usual concerns about security and quality of work performed by prisoners, the ethical aspects of prison sourcing are hotly debated. Proponents argue prison sourcing is ethical because it defrays the costs of corrections, helps individuals successfully complete their confinement and prepares them to reintegrate into society, benefitting the individuals, their families, communities, and ultimately tax payers. Opponents argue that prison sourcing is a form of slavery, hurts small businesses, and steals jobs from law-abiding citizens. The authors developed this teaching case to allow students to explore these issues. The case is a dramatized version of an actual case study of prisoners performing BPO work for a private sector company.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
PaperTrails is a hypothetical company used as a rhetorical device to introduce the reader to the choices faced by private sector firms considering prison sourcing.
While David Bauman is a fictitious character, Beltway Inc. is an anonymized version of an actual private sector firm. One of Beltway Inc.’s clients is the US Patent and Trademark Office. To develop this teaching case, the authors visited the federal prison performing the patent document preparation work and collected data using key informant interviews with staff and prisoners, direct observation, and participant observation. In addition, RFPs, contracts, and articles about the relationship are in the public domain, so there was ample material with which to develop the teaching case.
References
Aos, S., Miller, M. and Drake, E. (2006). Evidence-Based Public Policy Options to Reduce Future Prison Construction, Criminal Just Costs, and Crime Rates, Olympia: Washington State Institute for Public Policy.
Browne, J. (2010). Rooted in slavery: Prison labor exploitation, race, poverty & the environment 17(1) [WWW document] http://reimaginerpe.org/files/Browne.20th.17-1.pdf (accessed August 2014).
Carroll, D. (2010). Behind the Fences: UNICOR’s effect on private business, Business Credit 112 (3): 12–13.
Gruber, A. (2005). Competing with Inmates, Government Executive 37 (12): 32–34.
James, N. (2007). Federal prison industries, congressional research service, cornell university ILR school [WWW document] http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/key_workplace/309 (accessed August 2014).
Lacity, M., Rottman, J. and Carmel, E. (2014). Impact Sourcing: Employing prison inmates to perform digitally-enabled business services, Communications of the AIS 34, Article 51.
Lipsey, M. and Cullen, F. (2007). The Effectiveness of Correctional Rehabilitation, A Review of Systematic Reviews, Annual Review of Law and Social Science 3: 297–320.
Quinn, G. (2010). USPTO and google to make patent & trademark data public, IP watchdog [WWW document] http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2010/06/07/uspto-google/id=10881/ (accessed August 2014).
Richmond, K. (2008). Factories within Fences: The effect of prison industries on female inmates, in Proceedings of the American Society of Criminology (St. Louis Missouri), 14 November.
Richmond, K. (2012). The Impact of Federal Prison Industries Employment on the Recidivism Outcomes of Female Inmates, Justice Quarterly 13 (4): 719–745.
Rohrlich, J. (2013) Will your job be reshored to a federal prisoner? [WWW document] http://www.minyanville.com/business-news/editors-pick/articles/Will-Your-Job-Be-Reshored-To/3/12/2013/id/48675 (accessed August 2014).
Saylor, W. and Gaes, G. (1991). PREP Study Links UNICOR Work Experience with Successful Pos-Release Outcome, Washington DC: U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
Saylor, W. and Gaes, G. (1992). The Post-Release Employment Project, Federal Prisons Journal 2 (4): 32–36.
Saylor, W. and Gaes, G. (1996). PREP: A Study of ‘Rehabilitating’ Inmates Through Industrial Work Participation, and Vocational and Apprenticeship Training, Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Saylor, W. and Gaes, G. (1997). Training Inmates through Industry work Participation and Vocational and Apprenticeship Instruction, Corrections Management Quarterly 1 (2): 32–43.
Saylor, W. and Gaes, G. (2001). The Differential Effect of Industries and Vocational Training on Post Release Outcomes for Ethnic and Racial Groups, Corrections Management Quarterly 5 (4): 17–24.
Smith-Ingley, G. and Cochran, M. (1999). Ruinous or Fair Competition: The correctional industries public debate, Corrections Today, October Issue, pp. 82–100.
Wilson, D., Gallagher, C. and MacKenzie, D. (2000). A Meta-Analysis of Corrections-based Education, Vocation, and Work Programs for Adult Offenders, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 37: 347–368.
Acknowledgements
This teaching case is based on an academic version of the case published as Lacity, M., Rottman, J., and Carmel, E. (2014), Impact Sourcing: Employing prison inmates to perform digitally-enabled business services, Communications of the AIS 34, Article 51. Portions reprinted with permission from Communications of the Association of Information Systems.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lacity, M., Rottman, J. & Carmel, E. Prison sourcing: ‘doing good’ or ‘good for business’?. J Info Technol Teach Cases 4, 99–106 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/jittc.2014.7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jittc.2014.7