by Jo Ellen Nott

On November 30, 2022, the new Executive Director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC) addressed a scandal that began unfolding eight months earlier, when a convicted child molester manning a contract call center used his work computer to download kiddie porn.

“I’m an action-oriented guy,” Steven Harpe told the state Board of Corrections (BOC).  But he promised not to act pending results of an ongoing investigation into the incident.

Meanwhile Corey Fore, the prisoner accused of accessing child pornography, pleaded guilty on August 24, 2022, receiving two life sentences in addition to eight others he is already serving for 2015 child pornography and sex abuse convictions. 

Fore was being held at James Crabtree Correctional Center, where he worked for Oklahoma Correctional Industries (OCI) at a call center operated under contract for Case Energy Partners when he was caught downloading child porn on his work computer in March 2022.

OCI earns millions of dollars for DOC from contracts with outside companies by billing them for prisoner labor at market rate but paying the incarcerated workers just 43 cents per hour. Under its contract with TruEnergy, for example, DOC collects $7.25 per hour that a prisoner works manning a company call center behind prison walls – meaning the agency pockets the $6.82 difference per hour. Arrangements like these earned more than $6.3 million for DOC in the last two years.

But this golden goose laid an egg that was definitely not golden in Fore’s case. After he admitted posting child porn to Instagram from a prison computer, DOC shut down all of the call centers OCI operated. The resulting investigation is probing alleged criminal behavior and a lack of oversight, seeking to understand who knew and allowed prisoners to commit new crimes as they worked for OCI.

KOKH in Oklahoma City conducted its own investigation, raising alarms about the access some prisoners working for OCI had to personal information of private citizens. A flyer obtained by the TV news outfit advertised a document-scanning service run by OCI inside Joseph Harp Correctional in Lexington. The service promised to scan high school yearbooks at no cost using “low-risk offenders,” but the news station claimed some of the prisoners looking at children’s school photos “might very well be a sex offender.”

Of some 21,700 prisoners held by DOC, only about 1,200 – just over 5% - work for OCI. Of those, just 47 worked on the yearbook project. And only 28 of them were convicted of crimes serious enough to warrant a life sentence.

In several news reports filed over the incident with Fore and OCI, none expressed concerns about stealing jobs from non-incarcerated Oklahomans or paying slave wages for prisoner labor.

Source: KOKH

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