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Sunday, June 25, 2000 CBS's " 60 Minutes " had a segment on prison inmates being used as a cheap labor force. I was astounded to see that convicted felons were actually assembling parts for United States military systems ( Patriot missiles were used as an example, for instance ) and recording your credit card numbers for purchases ( TWA airline reservations were used as an example by CBS reporters ). I was surprised to see this communist People's Republic of China-like practice being used in America, but I guess I shouldn't have been, because this inmate pseudo-slave labor force is so readily available in an environment of complete moral bankruptcy!
Today, June 27th, I had my own experience with a company possibly using sentence serving inmates as cuntomer service phone answering employees.
I was having an ongoing problem with a long distance service provider, which indirectly caused me to call the customer service 800 number of my local telephone company three times, in so many months. This morning my contact was right out of the Twilight Zone!
I was not surprized, nor was it unusual, when I had to wade through numerous button pusher menus until the final pause before the representitive of my nameless local telephone service provider began. The time it took for the representitve to answer was quite a bit longer than normal; over twenty minutes as opposed to under ten. Additionally, the voice which eventually answered was not the high pitched female voice I was expecting, but a gruff low pitched male one instead. Male operators and directory assistance agents are not the rarity they were twenty years ago, but this reprentitive was unable to answer the simple questions which were answered quite quickly the previous times, requiring a transfer to another department. I didn't remember the specific name of the department I had been transfered to in the previous calls covering the identical problem to finalize the transaction, but I knew that had to be done. The agent insisted that I call the long distance provider directly, though I remembered that there had to be something done by the local company first. The agent would not let me talk to a supervisor or another agent?
On the spur of the moment, thinking about the " 60 Minutes " piece, I asked the name of the agent and where he was located. After the first name only and town was provided, I then asked if he was working from within a penitentiary? The answer was a firm YES! I was floored by this as it was not said in a joking manner in any way. I had visions of this possible caged felon using my information for some nefarious purpose or simply getting even in some bizarre way for his own inaction in working with my problem. I hung up the phone after scheduling a supervisor call back ( interesting concept, huh? The Warden, maybe? ).
I decided to call my local branch office to make an appointment for an in person meeting and/or to ask their advice as to how I should proceed. I made them aware of my previous contact with the so-called inmate-agent and was given assurances that the company did not use prison employees. Additionally, I was also informed that they didn't employ anyone with a criminal record. They had no explaination for what happened to me and why their employee would say what he did, other than a joke? This was no joke. In fact, the last contact said that there was no record of my first conversation in the computer record, including the supposed pending call back from a supervisor.
I am at a loss as to how to feel about this, but three things are for certain. 1) The person I got connected to after waiting through the menus from the local telephone company answered yes to my question concerning his prison location. 2) The next representitive I got resolved the original issue quickly and could not offer a reason why the first representitive didn't take care of it. 3) The local office claimed they didn't employ inmates.
It was one thing to have prisoners making items like licences plates, as it is tough to sabotage an inanimate object with no working parts. This latest trend to employ convicts currently serving sentences to take down personal information like names, addresses, credit card numbers and telephone numbers could be a little too tempting to hard core criminals. How are you going to punish an inmate who uses the information gathered from this questionable employment opportunity for criminal purposes? If the prisoner is serving a life sentence, are you going to add some time to his next life?
Not only have the lunatics taken over the asylum and the convicts have now taken over the penitentiary, but they both now have access to our most personal information!
- Bongo ( Call the Bighouse? )
