JURIS - Inmates doing data entry!!!

[James Love <love@essential.org>]

from TAP-INFO Internet Distribution List
Taxpayer Assets Project
Crown Jewels Campaign - JURIS
November 4, 1993

-	Prison Inmates Offer to provide data entry for JURIS

-	DOJ UNICOR contacts Colgate about JURIS


	This was just sent by Brian Baker, the director of the Howard 
	Univesity Law Library.

Date: Wed, 3 Nov 93 13:15:01 EST
From: Brian L. Baker <baker@scsla.howard.edu>

Jamie-

Were you aware that DOJ has a division, called UNICOR, that uses prison
inmates to do data entry?  Today, at the Federal Imaging Conference
exhibition hall, I met a gentleman who heads this division.  The group
is also known as Federal Prison Industries, Inc. and the control all
the manufacturing done by federal prisoners.  While this usually
involves the making of anything from paintbrushes to office furniture,
they do have a division that does data conversion services.  This
group seems to do data entry/capture, text processing/conversion,
text markup/editiong, image processing and digitization, OCR/scanning,
datbase input, and CD-ROM data preperation.

They seem like a perfect fit for the JURIS program.  They agree.  They
told me that they had been tracking the JURIS problem and were very
interested in getting involved.  In fact, just last week they sent a
letter to STEVE COLGATE expressing that interest.  I think this button
needs to be pushed.

What a perfect publicity item.  The DOJ uses its own division, UNICOR,
to cost effectively reenter all the data yanked by WEST.  It saves
money because it uses prison labor - they don't have to even pay them
minimum wage.

It looks like a God send to me!  Additionally these people at least
claim that they agree it should be opened to public access.

I hope that this tid bit of info helps in some way!

Take Care,

Brian L. Baker
baker@scsla.howard.edu
30baker@cua.edu
202-806-8045

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