Prisoners as telemarketers? Inmates or Outsourcing?

Should prisoners have access to private information belonging to members of the public?
Do you want your teenager to answer the telephone and a convicted felon is on the other end of the line?

Oregon's Snake River Correctional Institution holds a telemarketing call center in the prison.

Here is an excerpt from a USA TODAY article:

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.
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The center opened last year after a yearlong push by the Oregon Department of Corrections to recruit businesses that would otherwise move offshore. The program reduces by 24% recidivism, the frequency in which released prisoners violate the law and wind up back in jail, and teaches prisoners to work together.

Yikes ...
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