Oklahoma Inmates Operate Call Centers for a Conservative Super PAC

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC) entered a service contract with telemarketing firm HBW Leads that authorizes inmates at four state prisons—James Crabtree, Mabel Bassett, Lexington Correctional Center and Joseph Harp—to perform outbound calls for “marketing lead generation” and “political opinion polling.” The contract specifies that HBW Leads pays the DOC $10 for each inmate hour worked, while prisoners receive a wage of $2 per hour, with possible bonuses for generating leads or completing surveys. The arrangement was documented in public-record contracts obtained by Oklahoma Watch.

SnopesOklahoma Prisoners Paid $2 an Hour to Make Political Calls for Conservative Super PAC

Under the contract, $8 of each $10 inmate-hour fee is retained by Oklahoma Correctional Industries, a self-supporting DOC sub-entity that funds work-programs and job-training for offenders. —more than $400,000 across 38 payments between March 2026 and June 2026, and nearly $600,000 in total for the year. The most recent payment to Visible Trends was reported on June 29.

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Oklahoma’s prison-industry rules permit service-type jobs, such as call-center work, to be compensated at rates set by correctional-industry officials rather than by the federal minimum-wage standard. A 1993 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that inmates in the state’s correctional-industries program are not “employees” covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, allowing wages below $7.25 per hour for such services. The state previously faced scrutiny after the 2019 Bloomberg presidential campaign terminated a contractor upon learning that incarcerated women were making campaign calls; the Oklahoma call centers were temporarily shut down after an unrelated security issue before being reinstated with political polling explicitly included.

Oklahoma Prisoners Paid $2 an Hour to Make Political Calls for Conservative Super PAC Snopes

The DOC stated that political-polling calls fall within the authorized scope of the contract and that the agency regularly reviews call-center scripts for compliance with state and federal law. Barrett Young, executive director of Make Liberty Win, told Oklahoma Watch that the super PAC was unaware that prison labor was used and has ended its relationship with the vendor for performance reasons. Attempts to obtain comment from HBW Leads have not yielded a response.

Oklahoma Prisoners Paid $2 an Hour to Make Political Calls for Conservative Super PAC

Inmates interviewed by Oklahoma Watch described the work as voluntary and the highest-paying assignment available inside the facilities. Steve Wilbanks, an inmate at James Crabtree, said callers were given scripts that sometimes criticized candidates, promoted opponents and asked voters for support, often without sufficient context about the issues. Other workers expressed concern that the political content of the calls went beyond neutral polling and resembled push-polling tactics.

Oklahoma Prisoners Paid $2 an Hour to Make Political Calls for Conservative Super PAC