Michael Bloomberg used inmates in an Oklahoma prison to make calls for his 2020 presidential campaign.

Bloomberg’s campaign contracted the New Jersey-based call-center company ProCom via a third-party vendor. ProCom has call centers in New Jersey and Oklahoma, and two in Oklahoma are operated out of state prisons.

The billionaire’s 2020 campaign confirmed the arrangement to The Intercept, which first reported on it, but said it was unaware prisoners were being used.

Civil-liberties groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have consistently expressed concerns about prison labor and the exploitation of inmates.

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The Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, who with a net worth of about $54 billion is the wealthiest member of the 2020 field, used prisoners to make phone calls to California for his 2020 campaign, The Intercept reported on Tuesday.

Bloomberg’s campaign contracted a New Jersey-based call-center company called ProCom via a third-party vendor. ProCom has call centers in New Jersey and Oklahoma, and two of the Oklahoma ones are operated out of state prisons, according to the report.

People incarcerated at the Dr. Eddie Warrior Correctional Center, a minimum-security facility for women, were making calls on behalf of Bloomberg’s campaign, The Intercept reported based on information from a source who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

Bloomberg’s campaign confirmed to The Intercept that it had an arrangement with ProCom via a third-party vendor but said it did not know prisoners would be involved. The campaign said it had scrapped the relationship altogether in light of this revelation.

„We didn’t know about this, and we never would have allowed it if we had,“ Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for Bloomberg’s campaign, told The Intercept. „We don’t believe in this practice and we’ve now ended our relationship with the subcontractor in question.“

Bloomberg later issued a statement on Twitter.

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„Earlier today, a news outlet reported that prison workers were being used by a subcontractor to make telephone calls on behalf of my campaign,“ the statement said. „I’m not attacking the news: the story was fundamentally accurate. We only learned about this when the reporter called us, but as soon as we discovered which vendor’s subcontractor had done this, we immediately ended our relationship with the company and the people who hired them.“

The campaign vowed to ensure vendors „more properly vet their subcontractors moving forward.“

It’s unclear how much any of the prisoners involved would have been paid. A ProCom cofounder told The Intercept that the company paid the Oklahoma minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, but the department’s website said inmates were paid „up to $20 per month“ if they had „institutional job assignments.“

Inmates in 17 states went on strike in 2018 in part to protest prison labor, which they’ve likened to modern-day slavery. As part of their demands, they called for better compensation.

Civil-liberties groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have consistently expressed concerns about prison labor and the exploitation of inmates.

David Fathi, the director of the National Prison Project at the ACLU, in November 2018 wrote: „Most prisoners want to work, and jobs for prisoners can be a very positive thing. A job can provide an escape from the crushing monotony of prison life – a chance to do something productive, earn a little money, and maybe even learn some skills that are useful in and of themselves and useful when reentering society.“

But Fathi added that „given the vast power inequality between prisoners and their employers, there is also a persistent and real potential for exploitation and abuse“ and prisoners were „excluded from the legal protections enjoyed by all other workers.“