This message comes from Rapid Response from Wait What, a podcast making sense of the critical moments that shape companies, leadership, and the future of business. It's everything you need to understand how leaders navigate crisis and change. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fana Money from Ipair.
Well, tell me, who is this Darlene George and how did she make all this stuff happen? Oh, my God. Well, Darlene George is a regular young lady from Brooklyn, New York. Darlene George is talking to Susan Sharon, a local public radio reporter at Mean Public Radio who interviewed Darlene recently.
Hello. I'll tell you that off the record. Oh, well, I'll tell you, too. Okay, thanks.
Susan is talking to Darlene because Darlene has kind of a remarkable work situation right now. Darlene is a grants program coordinator at a local health center in Maine. So I monitor, scout, and look for grants, making sure we stay within regulations, guidelines of each grant. She gets paid a salary, which is not hourly, but she generally tries to work seven to five-ish.
But if I am needed before the fact, I'm there. If I'm needed after the fact, I'm there. If I have a project I'm working on and it entails me working on a Saturday or Sunday, guess what? I'm doing it.
That's my job. Is it hard to do your job, you know, with the distractions and the noise around you and that sort of thing? Well, what I will say is that I couldn't be more supported if I was on the outside. The outside.
This September would make two years. I've been working completely full-time. From your cell? Yeah, from my, yeah.
Well, we don't call them cell. We just call them my room. From your room. Right, because we don't have, like, slamming doors.
Darlene works remotely from prison. She is currently incarcerated. I have a 40-year sentence. I have been here for 16 years, and I think my earliest release date is in 2040, 2040.
So with good time, I'm quite sure that'll dwindle down a little bit. Darlene is serving 40 years for murder. And Darlene's job, it is not a prison job, like, you know, working in the prison library, though she has done that too. She works for a company on the outside, a regular non-prison company.
Do your colleagues that you interact with at the job, do they know that you're... Absolutely. Absolutely. 100%.
Yes, they do. Darlene does her job remotely from the main correctional center, where there may not be a lot of slamming doors, but there are still prison guards and prisoners and all the regular prison roles. I literally, I work from my room. So I have all my equipment in my room.
There's a sign that I put out on the thing that lets people know I'm Zooming, I'm in meetings. Please don't, you know, don't knock. Like, of course, if they do their checks, they walk by, they know exactly what I'm doing. They can see me, I can see them.
And now, Darlene's pay in this job. It is not the, like, 63 cents per hour you get for working as a prison cook or the $7 an hour that incarcerated people get for fighting active fires in California. Darlene doesn't work for free, like prisoners do in seven states. She's not paid minimum wage.
Can I ask you how much you earn for your job? Are you comfortable talking about that? Um, I'll tell you off the bracket, because I don't want the people in the unit to feel some type of way. So I'll definitely tell you.
Darlene gets paid enough that she would rather the other people in the prison not find out how much exactly. And Darlene is not the only pretty well-paid remote worker behind bars in Maine. My name is Preston Thorpe. Um, can you share anything about what you're getting paid?
Uh, I prefer to keep my salary, uh, private, but I can say that it's definitely, like, what you would expect to see for, like, a senior-level software engineer in the U.S. Uh. Can I say that you're making it to the six figures? Is that accurate?
Yeah. Okay. Is that a kind of report? Yeah, that's okay.
Yeah, he makes six figures. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Sarah González, and today on the show we have this great reporting from Maine Public Radio's Susan Sharon about a new experiment in prison, remote jobs, paying fair market wages. Maine was the first to do it, and three other states have followed.
So today, how this kind of standard thing of having a job and getting a paycheck works in a restricted place like prison. What it's like for the workers, what it's like for the employers who choose to hire them, and how the prison system is handling this new prison economy that has emerged. Here in Seattle, we're building the technologies of the future. But we're also dealing with some big economic challenges.
I'm Joshua McNichols. And I'm Monica Nicholsberg. On our podcast, Booming, we dig into your questions about our ever-changing economy in the Pacific Northwest. Listen to Booming from KUOW in Seattle, part of the NPR Network.
Susan, thank you so much for joining us, for sharing the story with us. Well, thank you so much for your interest in the story and for having me. You did the thing that we love at Planet Money, which is you followed the whole thread. Thank you.
Such great reporting. Susan Sharon is the local public radio reporter in Maine who spent time in prisons interviewing remote workers and the people who choose to hire them while they're incarcerated. And she says this whole remote work thing all started because of the pandemic. The growth of remote work happened kind of as a result of COVID.
Some people in prison were taking college classes. The educational classes they were taking suddenly moved online, and that sparked this idea. It sparked this idea that maybe incarcerated people enrolled in college could, you know, take laptops into their cells with them and do their college classes online, like all the other students in the world on the outside were doing, right? And things kind of expanded from there.
The remote work is an outgrowth of prison education. There are people in Maine prisons that have gotten their bachelor's degrees, master's. I think there are several PhD candidates now. So what are you going to do with these people?
It's like, yes, they get their education, but some of them may be serving several years. So what's next? Well, how about some better work opportunities? The thinking was kind of like, if a person in prison is allowed to have a laptop in their cells all day and night to do homework and take online classes, couldn't they have a laptop in their cells to do real outside world jobs too and get real outside world wages?
Now, not that many people have gotten this opportunity. In all, since this whole thing started, just 45 people in Maine prisons have been able to get remote jobs. Typically, you would not get a job because you're incarcerated, so. Preston Thorpe is the one making six figures, which, by the way, is double what the corrections officers who guard him make.
And it's been a game changer for Preston. He said it's hard enough to get a job when you have a criminal record, let alone while you're still inside. And now I feel like my life has a purpose. Like, there's no situation right now that would cause me to do something where I would risk losing, like, my job, my computer.
Preston is 33 years old, and he told Susan Sharon that he's always been a computer guy, a computer nerd, he said, since he was 13 years old. It's kind of what got him in trouble later in life. He talked to me about buying drugs on the dark web and selling them. And I think the second time he was convicted because he had a powerful synthetic opioid, much more deadly than fentanyl capable of killing lots of people.
Preston is about nine years into his 20-ish year sentence. He used to be in a different prison in a different state, and he says he got in a lot of trouble there, so much so that they transferred him to me, like, we need this person out of our custody. And when he got to me, Preston started seeing possibilities, school, picking up coding again. And he did super well, so well, no issues.
And eventually, he got a remote job as a lead principal engineer for this non-profit that pushes for education in prisons. And because Preston had a laptop, you know, in his cell all day and all night that he could use for certain approved things, Preston started contributing to this big open-source coding project. Basically, this company was going to attempt to rewrite this database called SQLite in Preston's favorite programming language. Those that understand what that is, like, will understand, right?
It's the most prevalent database on the planet, on every cell phone, every computer. Anyone could contribute to this open-source project, and Preston became a top contributor over and over again. Preston was one of around four or five people who was in this very exclusive category of people who both stayed and did very high-quality work. Glauber-Costa is the CEO of Terceau, which was a company attempting this big free write.
And when he saw what Preston was contributing, he was like, who is this Preston dude? So let's him up on GitHub. And that's how we found out, hold on a minute, this guy is in prison. So I caught him for sure.
When I read his profile, I couldn't believe it was real. I couldn't believe it was real. And then two weeks later, I just sent him a message. Glauber assumed that communication with Preston would be impossible, but it turned out that Preston could do video calls.
I then found out that he's part of a program that would allow him to have a job in prison now. I don't offer him anything. It's one of those things where you don't want to date your friend because you're afraid of destroying the friendship. So I leave him be.
But over time, all the engineers at Terceau were like, we need to hire Preston. When can we hire Preston? And eventually, Glauber's like, you know what? Yeah.
We knew the prison thing was the only thing stopping us. And then I found out that we could actually work around it. So why wait? Why wait?
Let's just do it now. Glauber actually opened a position for Preston specifically. There was one big hurdle to clear. Glauber's company, Terceau, is a tech company.
They deal with confidential data. So they have all these data security compliance rules. So Preston had to pass a background check. This would be the hardest part of the process.
This is like, OK, we're going to run a background check on Preston. And obviously, he will come, you know, he's in prison. He's done something. Glauber's asking their security consultants, like, how do I work around this?
I'm about to hire a guy in prison. He said, you know what you want? I'm about to hire a person in prison. We're going to run a background check.
What do we do? It turns out that the background check only checks the last seven years. And Preston has been in prison for nine years. So he's actually our cleanest background check.
He doesn't have a parking ticket. And his background check is cleaner than mine. Out of the fact that, you know, I have a parking ticket, he does not. Preston is now a senior level software engineer at Terceau.
And Glauber has gotten a lot of pushback for hiring Preston at all over anyone else. Oh, this is a job that could have been given to another person in America. And for me, it's like, look, I'm not giving a job to a person. Like, I actually opened a position for Preston, right?
People have accused Glauber of turning to prison labor because it must be cheap. We were accused the other day of just exploiting prison labor. So that means they're exploiting. With Preston's paid market rates.
Yeah, but Preston does put in a lot of hours. And the two things that he has that other software developers don't have, one of them, a lot of free time, right? Because he has no other form of entertainment. And I think the other thing that he has that is very fantastic is his will to do better.
Preston says he works constantly, but it is self-imposed. I kind of made a promise myself that I would take advantage of, you know, of every hour that I had here and started looking at, like, an opportunity to make something of myself. And Preston has done something kind of remarkable with some of his earnings. He bought a house from prison.
I did. Yeah, it's not super glamorous, right? It's a manufactured home. But yeah, it's across the street from my parents.
So when I'm able to get out, I should be able to live across the street from my family. After the break, what people in prison get to spend their salary on, on the inside, and, of course, what they have to spend it on. There's a list. NPR's newest podcast is where you can find NPR's biggest interviews.
I'm Steve Inskey. The program is called Newsmakers. We talk to some of the most powerful and influential people at this moment to put real questions to them and push for real answers. Follow Newsmakers on the NPR app or any podcast player, or you can watch on NPR's YouTube channel.
All right. Will you say your name and title for me? Sure. Randall Liberty, Commissioner of the Maine Department of Corrections.
Liberty? Yes. Really? Really?
I mean, like, I run prisons and my last name is Freedom. I was a soldier, too. And yeah, so that's a topic of discussion sometimes. Are you over it?
Yeah. Okay, let's move on. Randall Liberty runs prisons in Maine, and it was his decision to allow incarcerated people to have remote jobs. Susan Sharon also spoke with Randall, but we called him up ourselves, too, to talk about the economics here.
Now, Randall says remote work all started when this college in Maine called Colby College reached out to Randall. They asked me if one of my residents that was incarcerated at the Macy Prison could be an agent professor from the prison. This person was getting his master's degree. He was a hospice worker working with people who were dying in prison.
He was a canine trainer. He was discipline-free. And so after some consideration, Randall allowed it. Yeah.
What was his inmate's name? This is a... Do you know what you say? Well, the challenge with that is there are victims.
It was a serious crime. It was a home invasion, and a serious bodily injury happened to a young person and to her parent. Like with a gun? Machete.
Okay. That's why we don't talk about it. Yeah. And that's one of the challenges with this, right?
Yeah. Randall has decided that the opportunity to do remote work is on the table for anyone, regardless of how serious their crime is, as long as they have no issues in prison and have at least a GED. Maybe a back story to note here is that before Randall was a soldier and a sheriff and a prison commissioner, Randall grew up with a dad who was in and out of prison for burglaries, arson, other things. As a result, we all suffered.
I mean, we grew up in a very difficult environment, my brothers and I. So Randall has personal experience with incarceration and visiting his dad in prison in Maine. Not only did I was incarcerated, but I guarded him at Somerset County Jail for three months. You were like the corrections officer?
I was the corrections officer. I was 21 years old. And I was in the same jail with him as an officer. I was in the same unit.
So I'd go upstairs, and there were 15 people in that unit. Dad was there. And it'd be, good morning, Dad. Good morning, Randy.
Did you hug him? I wouldn't hug him because it wouldn't be appropriate, you know? But it was always good small talk. Did you have been, like, in secret?
No, no, no, no. You're a rule follower, Randy. Have to be. And frankly, there was no training at the time, so I would literally ask him, what do I do now?
And I'd say, I have a count. I'd say, okay, line up for count. I know, it's ridiculous. Hey, father, son.
That's my story, you know? Randall is the first to say that those experiences shaped the kind of prison commissioner he ended up becoming. And in thinking about allowing remote work in prison, Randall thought about how this would affect the victims of crimes, if there were victims involved. He thought about how it could affect the people incarcerated, the people they left on the outside, like their children, their aging parents, and how this whole new prison economy would even work.
The first person to get this opportunity, the adjunct professor, ended up making $27,000. And he had donated $1,000 to his local church in tithing in the community. He paid for breaks for his mother, so she could get car inspected. He paid for tuition for his nephew to go to college.
How do you know how he spends his money? Do you have access to his bank account? Yes. All monies that are earned by residents, they all go to their internal accounts at the main department of corrections.
Yeah. The employer does a direct deposit to not the employee, but to the department of corrections. So if they want to use their money, they put in a request to the finance department at the department of corrections saying, like, I want to buy a house, I guess, or pay my child's college tuition, and then a check is sent out to the outside. It can take, like, a week to release the money.
Now, in terms of how people can use the money inside prison, they can't buy access to much except better snacks, better food in their cells, a few other perks. Can they buy, like, you know, a TV? Yes, they can buy a game station. They can buy, you know, any of those sorts of things.
So Preston Thorpe, who's making six figures, is his cell just, like, game console, TV, all the best snacks? Preston would certainly have those things in his cell, in his room, and he has a laptop. And Randall really gets pushback over all of this. Some people say that prison should be punitive, that people shouldn't get these perks or all this money.
To those tougher on-crime people, Randall says, well, what if they owe victims money? There are times when somebody that has... issue has done 30 or 40 burglars before they're caught and they all have a thousand dollars in restitution to the victims of crime if somebody's doing time and they have the opportunity to do remote work and make fair market wages they can pay that debt down victim restitution if a person in prison has a remote job they need to pay off whatever debt they owe to victims randall made a list of priorities for where the money was going to go and victim restitution is number one there's also court fees and fines so usually when people all over the country are arrested and put in jail or prison when they walk out they walk out with a bill they might have to pay for the stenographer the judge the arrest itself if they have a job they can chip away at that debt while they're still in prison 25 of their salary goes to victim restitution and once that's made off then 25 percent goes to court fees and fines you know so we don't capture the whole paycheck and make it a frustrating experience for them if people have children and owe any child support that comes out of their paycheck too automatically before you can get to the hands of the department of corrections same with all the state and federal taxes taxes come out and then they also pay 10 percent of their salary to room and board and then 10 percent goes to like a savings account for when they get out and then the remaining money sits in the account of the residents do as they wish last year randall says people working remote jobs behind bars earned about four hundred thousand dollars that's gross income the department of corrections has full-time workers earned between forty thousand dollars a year to more than ninety thousand dollars but then some get a full benefits package too medical dental i have individuals that are receiving health care for their families while they're incarcerated um i have some that have retirement 401k tuition reimbursement paid vacation randall feels like he's been really thoughtful about how he's prioritized everything you know obviously i have to talk to both sides of the aisle but we have to have a conversation about the benefit to the community the benefit to survivors of crimes and you know victims of crimes that owe money and i say to them if you're a fiscal conservative do you have any opposition to preston or anyone else you know paying for their families feeding their children paying their mortgages or would you rather have them be on the state on the state so remember that room and board thing the department of corrections takes 10 percent off everyone's salary so letting people in prison work generates revenue for the prisons some advocates argue that there are too many prison fees and that the state shouldn't take so much of their salary because people are already paying for their crimes with incarceration some lawmakers in the main recently said that they want to study the impact that these fees can have on prisoners like could this new economic model create some weird incentives last year main prisons collected about forty thousand dollars in room and board fees off of these remote workers that's good it's not like phenomenal right or what it's a contribution randall had to ask for permission to charge room and board and the legislature landed on 10 percent can you see a future where so many inmates or residents are doing remote work and people over time go let's take 20 percent of their salary 30 percent 40 percent do you think about whether that could happen um yeah i'm not you know it could happen that is what's happening in alabama for example in alabama certain people in prison are allowed to leave the prison every day to go to work in person at mcdonald's burger king and in general the workers from prison there get like seven dollars an hour but the alabama department of corrections takes 40 percent of their salary alabama makes hundreds of millions of dollars in the cut they take from workers in prison actually about 450 million dollars a year so some people and some economists argue that there is like a half a billion dollar incentive to keep people in prison working and maybe a disincentive to grant people parole if they're up for release so with that context in mind i'm just curious if like for those who might hear this and go like i can see a version where you know uh it becomes more i don't know exploitative potentially not on my watch you know not on my watch we have no interest in in balancing the budget on the backs of residents we know that the people in our care are there for mental health issues for substance use disorder poverty neglect trauma learning disabilities and in my opinion those are not the people we should balance them on their backs okay um there were a couple of bills in the main legislature where the department of corrections is asking to increase the fees that you're allowed to charge people in prison who do remote work right so what are just okay do you want to tell me what that what you're asking for yes we currently have no funds for technology basically the department of corrections asked the legislature to let them charge a fee if people want a laptop in prison we believe that if people have access to a remote work there should be some ability for them to pay for that like we do on the outside all of us pay our technology fee right and um internet fee i don't have the bill in front of me but it's um it's a small amount like hundreds of dollars or like a thousand dollars or no no i think it's ten dollars it's a very small money oh like a small money well it could be ten dollars but it could be up to thirty five dollars and this is per month okay so the fees even in me are growing but randall was adamant that his department of corrections is not going to tack on a bunch of other new fees for remote workers that it's just that laptop fee but what if once you're not the commissioner of the department of corrections like do you worry about like oh am i opening the door to that's that that's the challenge i have 14 months in 14 months a new person comes in see this is what i mean randall this is what i was talking about when i was like but then you leave and then what happens what we try to do is i try to try to create programs and have proof of concept with data when we have 65 percent of individuals returning to custody we need to do better you know the taxpayers need a better return on investment and in maine we currently have a 21 return to custody rate this works sure i i can see that the next person said oh this is working well we're going to continue it but like we're going to charge way more we're going to charge what alabama charges a 40 fee and then people walk out with nothing again yeah it's like the same thing like that's the that's the perverse incentive structure that i think about yeah so i um i do get that um i can tell people locally here in maine and try to set that example um of maybe a better way of doing corrections and you know for me it's um what we're doing is consistent with the people that are incarcerated and with dignity and respect currently there are just 27 people in prisons with remote jobs and it tends to be people with degrees like jarlene or unique skills like preston so some say maine will never be like alabama where thousands and thousands of prisoners generate revenue for the state because not everyone will have the skills and not every employer will want to hire people who are incarcerated however randall can see a future where maybe incarcerated people without a super special skill can have a good paying remote job too like working at a call center if you're interested in other episodes about the cost of incarceration economics of prisons we have linked to a bunch of episodes in our show notes go check them out and if you're a fan of planet money consider leaving us a review on the podcast app of your choice ratings and reviews really help other people find this show listener traven adventure recently left us a rating and review on apple podcast i'm gonna read it now traven wrote thank you so much for continuing to host this excellent podcast i've been a listener to npr for a long time and thoroughly enjoy them this podcast is particularly enlightening as well as entertaining traven we love to hear it thanks for the nice words today's episode of planet money was produced by sam yellowers kessler with some reporting help from veto emmanuel it was edited by just change fact-checked by cera cuarez and engineered by robert rodriguez with help from patrick murray our executive producer is alice goldmark special thanks to mara sanchez at alliance for higher education in prison and of course extra special thanks to susan sharon for sharing all of her reporting with us i'm sarah one tennis this is npr thanks for listening since the supreme court weakened the voting rights act of 1965 southern states are redistricting tennessee was the first state to make it happen the republican supermajority there broke up the state's only black majority district two years ago we embedded with the tennessee legislature to understand what one party power looks like listen to supermajority from npr's embedded season 19 power looks like listen to supermajority