COMPANIES SCOUR JAILS FOR LABOR

MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) -- Like many Americans who have in-demand work skills,
Lee Gibbs didn't have to go looking for a job -- employers sought him out.
And he was easy to find.

After completing a seven-year drug sentence at a state prison in Lockhart,
Texas, Gibbs walked out with more than the traditional $50 and a bus
ticket. He had $8,000 in a bank account, expertise in electronic component
boards and a new job starting at more than $30,000 a year.

``They were calling me, offering me jobs even before I got out,'' said
Gibbs, freed from prison over the summer. ``With the money I had saved, I
was able to get a vehicle, buy clothes for work, pay the first and last
month's rent on an apartment (and) put down a telephone deposit.''

Gibbs, 30, became marketable through a prison work program run by a
Marietta-based company, U.S. Technologies, with subsidiaries that use
prison inmates for outsourcing contracts with private companies.

With more Americans than ever behind bars and businesses shopping for
workers from a tight labor pool, there is renewed debate over the pros and
cons of having ``cons'' contributing to free-market enterprises.

For most of this century, prison work programs have been sharply restricted
by concerns about unfair competition and use of inmates as ``slave labor,''
along with questions about whether criminals deserve to receive training,
pay and job experience.

However, the programs ``can be such a force for good,'' U.S. Attorney
General Janet Reno said last May. Wages can go to victims' restitution
funds, prison recidivism might be reduced, and there could be ``another
engine'' for the national economy.

At the Liberty Correctional Institution in Bristol, Fla., Michael Provence
will soon be eligible for parole after serving 25 years for murder in ``a
drug deal that went bad.'' After spending years doing menial tasks like
making mess-hall tables, he now does computer-assisted drafting and mapping.

Facing the outside world isn't as worrisome as it would have been ``if I
had been isolated from technology the last 25 years,'' said Provence, who
expects to have little problem finding work.

``For a lot of these people, this is the first job they've held,'' said Ken
Smith, chief executive officer of U.S. Technologies. ``They learn work
habits. They have to get up, shower and shave and show up for work on time,
they have to show initiative, they have to meet goals, they have to stay
out of trouble.

``It creates self-respect and gives them a work ethic, and then when they
get out and the drug lord says, `Glad to see you, I've got a job for you,'
they say no.''

In Florida, PRIDE Enterprises, a nonprofit company that started in 1985
training and employing prison inmates to perform useful jobs with a goal of
reducing prison recidivism, employs 4,000 inmates in 51 operations. Their
jobs range from making eyeglasses to data entry.

Pam Davis, its president, says studies show that less than 13 percent of
the organization's inmate workers landed back in prison, compared to a
national rate of about 60 percent.

With more people in prison longer because of tougher sentencing laws,
inmate work programs could be an important component of the economy.

``Part of our resources are the million or so people in prison,'' Davis
said. ``We've got to use them in creative ways; consider this as a viable
labor source rather than sending jobs offshore.''

Such programs are popular with prison officials who see them as a way to
reduce idleness that leads to problems.

``That's 200 inmates that are not just slogging around on the compound,''
Russell Smith, assistant superintendent at Liberty Correctional, said of
the PRIDE operation there.

But only a fraction of the nation's estimated 1.5 million prisoners work in
such programs, and efforts to expand often run into opposition.

``It's hard for me to accept that the government would put the welfare and
benefit of convicted felons above the interests of its taxpayers,'' said
Tim Graves, a Marietta man who said his 100-employee company was forced out
of business after 18 years when the government-run Federal Prison
Industries took over contracts to produce missile shipping containers.

Companies such as PRIDE and U.S. Technologies are trying to find ways
businesses can use inmates without threatening American jobs.

At one PRIDE project at Bristol, prisoners are digitally mapping records of
a European utility company that contracted with St. Petersburg, Fla.-based
Geonex to perform the time-consuming work. Ken Mellem, who heads Geonex,
said the contractor had suggested the work be done overseas.

While inmate labor may cost more than offshore work, Mellem said, it offers
advantages because the workers are within a few hours' drive of his company.

Smith, with expertise in turning around troubled companies, took over U.S.
Technologies last year with a vision of using inmates to fill the rising
demand for outsourcing work. His fast-growing company now is involved in
running or setting up operations in prisons in Texas, California, Utah and
Florida.

He finds prison workers highly motivated and responsible, as well as less
expensive to hire.

But, Smith recounted, there are drawbacks that don't come up in the normal
business world. Sitting in an office last year during a visit to the
Lockhart prison, he suddenly noticed ``deathly quiet.'' He looked up to see
he was the only person left in the building.

There had been a prison escape, and his entire work force had been returned
to their cells for a temporary lockdown.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski