Airline Reserves Phone Work for Young Prisoners

A correctional institution may not be the most common place to begin a career, but about 30 inmates at the California Youth Authority’s Ventura School in Camarillo are doing just that.

Through the combined efforts of the CYA and Trans World Airlines, the inmates have been trained as reservation agents who will be paid to handle overflow calls from the TWA reservation center in Los Angeles.

Clyde McDowell, superintendent of Ventura School, said the program will provide work experience for several wards who otherwise would have left the school without job skills.

“It will give them a chance not to go back to whatever got them into this place,” McDowell said.

Inmates said the program gave them a sense of pride and a different outlook on their futures.

“When the customer calls, they don’t know I am locked up,” said Eric Martin, 18, who is serving two years for assault with a deadly weapon. “They are calling TWA. I am TWA. They expect someone professional.”

California is the first state to adopt such a training program for juvenile institutions, although other states have tried similar programs successfully in adult prisons, according to Frederick Mills, administrator of the state program. Similar programs have been set up at two other correctional schools in California.

Of the 30 inmates who completed Ventura School’s six-week TWA training course last week, 25 will start processing reservations Jan. 22, said Sally McElwreath, the airline’s director of corporate communications.

Irwin Weinberg, manager of reservation operations planning for TWA, said he proposed the project about a year ago because the company had a hard time finding people to work on an on-call basis.

Could Lead to Permanent Jobs

“We needed somebody who could get on the phone immediately and relieve that pressure,” Weinberg said. Inmates are assured two hours of work a day, but hours will fluctuate after that, he said. He said he hoped that the inmates would work for TWA after they are released.

“If these people have shown us good work in the annex, then it is to our benefit to hire them” rather than train new people, he said.

Inmates will handle about 175,000 of the 37.5 million calls TWA receives each year from around the country, company officials said.

The inmates will be paid $5.67 an hour, Mills said, which is comparable to the rate earned by other reservation agents in the area. Fifteen percent of the inmates’ paychecks will go to the state restitution fund for crime victims, 20% to the state for room and board and 45% to a forced savings account, to be given back to the inmates when they are released. That leaves the inmates with about $1.13 an hour to send home or spend at the school’s canteen.

The partnership with TWA is one of two--the other is with Van Nuys-based Olga Co., a manufacturer of intimate apparel--at Ventura School that are part of the state’s Free Venture Private Industry Program. The program was made possible by 1981 legislation that allowed CYA offenders to produce products for sale on the open market.

The program sets up partnerships between industry and state correctional institutions. The state leases facilities to the company, usually at very low rents to compensate for the training and equipment the employer provides.

Mills said TWA has spent more than $100,000 on telephones, computers and the training course, which normally costs $2,000 to $5,000 for each reservation agent. TWA pays the school $200 a year in rent.

About 200 of the 665 inmates at Ventura School--ranging from prostitutes, burglars, robbers, murderers and rapists--applied for the program. The average stay at the institution is 17 months, Mills said.

Applicants with a history of credit-card fraud were not considered for the program, Weinberg said.

Precautions against fraud include having two TWA officials on duty at all times and visual monitoring of the facilities. All credit-card calls to TWA’s four reservation centers around the nation are handled through a central office.

“There will be peer-group pressure that will make it one of the most secure offices we have,” Weinberg said. “The people in the program are trying to climb. They are making a good wage, and I don’t think anyone in that program will throw that away.”

‘We Know the Consequences’

Participant Shelley O’Neill, 19, said she thought there was little chance of fraud with the Ventura School wards. “We know the responsibilities and consequences. We are more aware of what happens if we get caught,” she said. O’Neill was convicted of auto theft.

The program was patterned after a project run by the Arizona Prison Correctional Industry Program in partnership with Best Western Hotels. Of 132 people who have gone through the 5-year-old program at Arizona Center for Women, 26 have been hired by Best Western, said Lois Klein, the hotel chain’s media relations manager.

Says Tom Lescault, an aide to Gov. Bruce Babbitt and former chief executive officer of the Arizona program: “I think it represents the wave of the future in the correctional system--the partnership between the business community and the correctional system.”

Sewing-Machine Operators

A similar partnership is operating at Preston School in Ione, north of Sacramento, where about eight wards do metal prefabrication work for Preferred Assembly Systems. Another program set up at the Youth Training School in Ontario has been suspended because sales at the participating company decreased.

Olga Co. is hiring 50 to 60 wards for a production facility at Ventura School, according to Roger Williams, Olga’s senior vice president of operations. He said four inmates will be trained as sewing-machine operators.

The first garments are expected to be completed before the end of January, he said.