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Socially Responsible Outsourcing pp 138–163Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Impact Sourcing: Employing Prison Inmates to Perform Digitally Enabled Business Services

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Part of the book series: Technology, Work and Globalization ((TWG))

Abstract

This chapter explores the practice of employing prisoners to perform business services for the public and private sectors. The International Centre for Prison Studies reports that there are 6,291,179 prisoners worldwide. The United States (US) has the greatest number of inmates with 2,193,789 prisoners and the highest incarceration rate at 737 inmates per 100,000 people compared to all other countries. Given that 95% of US inmates will one day be released and given that 70% of released inmates become repeat offenders (FPI 2012), any intervention that can help released inmates re-enter society successfully must have positive impacts on the individuals, their families and communities. Prison employment programs have been one such intervention method. In this chapter, we aim to study a special type of prison employment program: the hiring and training of prisoners to perform business services using a computer, otherwise known as “digitally enabled” business services (Carmel et al. 2013).

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Authors
  1. Mary C. Lacity
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  2. Joseph W. Rottman
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  3. Erran Carmel
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Manchester Business School, UK

    Brian Nicholson

  2. Ryerson University, Canada

    Ron Babin

  3. University of Missouri-St Louis, USA

    Mary C. Lacity

Copyright information

© 2016 Mary C. Lacity, Joseph W. Rottman and Erran Carmel

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Cite this chapter

Lacity, M.C., Rottman, J.W., Carmel, E. (2016). Impact Sourcing: Employing Prison Inmates to Perform Digitally Enabled Business Services. In: Nicholson, B., Babin, R., Lacity, M.C. (eds) Socially Responsible Outsourcing. Technology, Work and Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-55729-2_8

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