Indian outsourcing firm looks to prison for data entry work

An Indian outsourcing firm is to run one of its data handling centres in a local prison as part of a new public/private partnership.

Radiant Info Systems has come to a deal with the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to hire 200 inmates of a state jail to work on data entry, and the processing and transmitting of information.

"The idea is to ensure a good future for the educated convicts after they come out of jail," CN Gopinath Reddy, director general of prisons in Andhra Pradesh, told the BBC.

"With their experience of working in the BPO [business process outsourcing] in jail, any company will absorb them in future."

The outsourcing centre will handle banking information 24 hours a day using a shift system. Inmates will be paid US$2.20 a day, compared to US$0.33 cents a day for other work.

The prison was chosen because it has almost 40 percent of inmates classified as educated. The area also has good IT infrastructure.

"We have identified the area in the jail where the unit will come up. It will have computers as well as connectivity," Radiant Info Systems director C Narayana Charyulu said.

If successful the scheme will be extended to other prisons in the area.