Doing time could take on a whole new meaning for some of the 63,000 inmates at UK jails as ICL Plc claims it is keen to recruit inmates to work on curing software problems associated with year 2000. It conjured up a bizarre picture of all those former Cobol programmers who had turned to crime late in life rather than earn a legitimate living charging exorbitant fees as Y2K consultants. The prison service though, while acknowledging that some inmates have a high level of IT skills, feel ICL jumped the gun with publicity. In fact, discussions with ICL are at early stage and Y2K work has not so far been discussed. The prison service already provides labor for the IT industry, and ‘Intel inside’ is more than just a slogan. But the work done inevitably, tends to be the humdrum business of data inputting. But ICL may yet make a unique contribution to penal reform. Faced with the prospect of spending years poring though millions of lines of Cobol, even the most recidivist criminal may be tempted to mend their ways.
