"I've gained a lot there," said Moore, explaining that the job has helped her deal with anxieties she once had over working with or talking to people.

Moore participated in an innovative program developed by the Colorado Department of Corrections in which a handful of female inmates from the nearby women's prison have been working on the agency's IT help desk since 2005. Corrections officials came up with the idea in the face of planned IT cutbacks.

"We were trying to support 6,500 staff with very few of us at the [IT] support center," said Karen Danley, support center manager for the agency. Danley and her team screened, interviewed and picked a handful of female inmates who were then trained as "first responders" for the agency's IT help desk.

Logistically, the arrangement worked out well. The female correctional facility is located just two miles from the IT support center, so female inmates who work on the help desk are picked up and dropped off after each six-hour shift. The inmates are strip-searched each time they re-enter the correctional facility for security purposes.

Still, the transition wasn't entirely smooth, noted Kim Withers, a help desk supervisor for the agency. "It was a big obstacle in the beginning for the staff to call [the inmates] and ask for help," said Withers. Some corrections workers were also concerned about how much information inmates would be allowed to see on their screens during a help desk call.