Inmates Working for Private Industries Assignment

Inmates Working for Private Industries - Assignment Example Studies have also shown that prisoners that undergo these programs are also less likely to commit crime and find themselves back in prison than those who do not participate in such programs (Atkinson & Rostad, 2003). There are also advantages in that this sort of arrangement allows American companies to produce goods at much reduced labor costs while at the same time producing truly â€Å"made in America† goods and reduces the transfer of labor to China and other parts of the world. There are also a few cons to these programs. Especially with the current recession and general high unemployment rates for the rest of the American population, prison labor provides unfair competition in the job market since the inmates take jobs that would otherwise be done by the out of prison population (Associated Press, 2012). The programs have also been accused of being exploitative of the inmates in that they are paid salaries that are well below the minimum rate. There are many examples of such types of programs. In South Carolina for example, employees from the Evans and Leath Correctional facilities work for the Escod Industries, a division of Insilco, a Columbus, Ohio based fortune 500 companies where they manufacture of electronic cables that are then sold to companies such as IBM and the Canadian-based Northern Telecom Corporation. In California, Trans World Airlines employs inmates from the California Youth Authority’s Ventura Training School for youthful offenders to take phone enquiries and schedule routes for their customers throughout the United States while in Phoenix Arizona, Best Western Internationals’ hotel reservations center was operated from the Arizona Correctional Facility for Women (Sexton, n.d.). A lot of these programs are very successful, usually far surpassing their objectives and meeting and exceeding expectations. The programs not only result in both the inmates, the organizations and the prison management