Captive Market

Under another program, TCI profits also enable inmates to rebuild donated computers and give them to Texas schools. Benestante says that keeping inmates active and productive is a major plus in maintaining order in prisons. Convicts who have worked for TCI for more than six months have a recidivism rate of about 20 percent, compared to the 30 percent rate overall for Texas prisoners.

Most prison industries started by making products strictly for prison use, like clothing, bedding and cleaning supplies. But they increasingly have been moving into markets that have little or nothing to do with prisons.

TCI has expanded to include 5,000 inmate workers managed by 600 civilian employees in 41 Texas prison factories. Gross sales last year topped $78 million, for a net profit of nearly $4 million.

Unlike convicts in other work programs in the United States, less than 1 percent of Texas convict workers receive pay for their labor. Texas inmates get two choices: They work when and where they're told to, or face lockup in solitary confinement without any possibility of parole.

About 20,000 federal prisoners work for UNICOR, for hourly wages of between 25 cents and $1.15. About three quarters of their earnings are deducted to offset the cost of incarceration and to pay court fees and victims' compensation.

Last year the federal prison industry had $667 million in sales, with a net profit of nearly $2 million. Officials for TCI and UNICOR say profits are plowed back into upgrading and expanding their factories and product lines.

In the late '90s, TCI began participating in Prison Industry Enhancement (PIE) programs that allow private corporations to partner with prison industries at state-run jails, where the maximum sentence is two years. The programs employ more than 400 inmates, the only Texas convicts who receive pay for their labor. Under federal legislation they get the minimum wage, most of which is deducted.

Benestante says that TCI can implement a PIE program only if it shows that no American jobs would be lost. "Every PIE was fixing to be a maquiladora," he says. He declined to name the manufacturers using Texas prisoners because "their competitors engage in negative advertising."

In one case, a company now named Lockhart Technologies Inc. subcontracted to recycle computer boards for Dell Computers in 1997. LTI shut down its Austin facility, laying off more than 150 people. But operations soon resumed in nearby Lockhart -- inside a private prison run by the Wackenhut Corporation. LTI received a tax abatement from the county, a captive labor force and a real deal on rent: $1 a year.

The prisoners were learning a trade, but they won't be getting a Dell job. The computer giant doesn't hire convicted felons. Dell stopped using inmate workers in 2001 after much bad publicity.

The list of companies that utilize prison labor reads like the Fortune 500. Microsoft, Starbucks, McDonald's, AT&T, Toys "R" Us, Sprint, JC Penney, Nintendo, TWA, Boeing and even Victoria's Secret have -- mostly through subcontractors -- hired convicts. Most of those companies won't hire ex-convicts, either.

That seems cruelly ironic to Boegnik, whose company will employ ex-convicts. "We have no issue with hiring someone who came out of prison, but we've never had one person come out of prison saying they were trained to build chairs."

Attitudes about the programs differ among the inmate workers themselves. In some instances, TCI has been known to "cherry-pick" convicts with specialized skills such as computer knowledge -- negating the argument that they are acquiring new workplace talents.

Programs are also heavy in positions of minimal value on the outside; the most common TCI job is janitor. And, inmates explain, teaching employable skills benefits TCI more than it does workers who are serving long sentences and are unlikely to ever enter the outside job market.

However, some inmates do estimate that about half of the prison workers take their jobs seriously and can acquire usable industry skills such as operating manufacturing equipment or even forklifts.

Critics question the value of prisoners' learning jobs that may not exist anymore beyond the prison walls. For instance, TCI has about 1,000 inmates producing garments and textiles, but few of those jobs exist on the outside.

Benestante explains that "85 percent of people who lose their jobs do so because of soft skills…work ethic, getting along with people, showing up sober and on time."

Most prison industry administrators argue that learning those "soft skills" -- a key one is learning to work together in a factory environment -- is just as important as specific job training.

Another criticism is that while U.S. law forbids the importation of prison-made goods, TCI and UNICOR both sell products to foreign governments. "If prison goods made in other countries aren't good enough for us," Boegnik says, "why are our prison goods good enough for them?"