Female inmates at Bedford Hills prison to staff DMV call center

 

Female inmates at Bedford Hills prison to staff DMV call center

 

 

 

 

ALBANY – Female prisooners at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County are staffing a Department of Motor Vehicles call center. The facility employs 39 inmates, including 31 full-time and part-time customer service agents, six team leaders and two trainers.

 

 

 

 

The program has been going on for years at the Bayview Women’s Prison in Manhattan, but that has been converted to a re-entry facility for short-timers being released into the community and Bedford Hills has a larger inmate population with longer sentences.

 

 

 

 

The men’s Arthur Kill Correctional Facility on Staten Island also operates a DMV call center, between the two, one million calls are expected yearly with a savings to taxpayers of $3.5 million annually.

 

 

 

 

In addition to saving money, officials said it will provide job skills for participating inmates, said prisons spokesman Erik Kriss.

 

 

 

 

“They do earn a small stipend  for doing this work and that helps them to afford items in the commissary and so forth and it gives them motivation,” he said. “Everyone needs motivation, whether you are outside prison or inside prison.”

 

 

 

 

The inmates who participate do not have access to DMV computers and are not able to access any customer data. Inmates convicted of a telephone related crime or credit card or computer fraud are not eligible to work at the center. Calls are monitored at random.

 

 

 

 

Each call center agent is supplied with a profile book containing all the information necessary to answer general assistance questions such as office hours and locations, identification requirements, the emissions program, and what customers will need and what they should expect before visiting a DMV office.

 

 

 

 

Anyone who calls in with a question pertaining to customer information is transferred to a civilian DMV employee.