Wanted: ambitious telesales staff, with drive and determination. No experience required but a conviction for fraud is desirable.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Faced with a shortfall in cash, the Austrian Justice Ministry set up call centres in prisons and hired them out to private companies as an alternative to outsourcing overseas.

It all began to go wrong when customers complained that their personal data was at risk of falling into the wrong hands and consumer groups expressed alarm about the advice being given over the phone by convicted fraudsters. Prison officials say that the scheme went ahead at seven jails despite their opposition.

Christian Sikora, who represents staff at Karlau prison, said: “We have filed a protest with the ministry, on moral, legal and ethical grounds. But our complaint was rejected because of the ‘enormous’ economic advantage of the scheme.”

Karlau, a small penitentiary near the southeastern city of Graz, has a call centre that employs 26 inmates who earn the prison more than €40,000 (£31,000) a year. Other prisons, such as Jakomini, also near Graz, and Sonnberg in Lower Austria have recorded similar success with their call centres. What has proved to be a money-spinner for prisons that previously offered inmates traditional jobs as locksmithing and joinery has caused uproar in Austria when it emerged that most of the call-centre workers were white-collar criminals convicted of fraud.

The companies that use the call centres are mainly telecoms services providers from Germany that are also responsible for monitoring all conversations for security purposes. They cannot be named for legal reasons.

Mr Sikora and other critics say that the profits do not justify the controversial scheme, not only because convicted conmen should not be given access to people’s private details but also because prisoners were being hired to do things similar to those “they had been locked up for in the first place”.

According to Mr Sikora, the call-centre contractors’ job interviewers prefer convicted fraudsters who are “experienced sales geniuses”.

Mr Sikora alleges that the inmates are instructed by their employers to give out fake names and claim that they work for well-known companies, such as Deutsche Telekom or Telekom Austria, in order to obtain personal data from interviewees that are then used for marketing purposes.

Telekom Austria has reportedly already taken legal action against one of the companies that runs a prison call centre.

Franz Hochstrasser, the Karlau prison warden, admitted that the call-centre operation had “hit a sour note”, but dismissed accusations of fraud.

Thomas Geiblinger, a spokesman for the Austrian Justice Ministry, also denied the accusations and said that the scheme had proved to be a success. He said: “We need other employment opportunities for inmates apart from joinery and locksmithing. The call-centre alternative has proven to be a success.

“But everything is under strict control and all calls are being monitored.”

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