NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- People worry about their personal information getting into the hands of criminals and, according to an I-Team report, it does.

Video: I-Team: Inmates Work With Citizens' Personal Info

Criminals see almost 1 million state documents -- some of them sensitive -- every year, and they are paid to do it, the I-Team reported.

The state said using the criminals saves residents millions of dollars, but could it be putting privacy at risk?

Decades ago, prison labor meant stamping numbers on Tennessee license plates. Now, it could mean a clear view of other numbers like addresses, birthdays, driver’s licenses, insurance policies and sometimes Social Security numbers.

The inmates earn a dollar an hour for typing data from state documents into computers. Some of the inmates are convicted killers. Death row inmates William Glenn Rogers, Edmund Zagorski and Perry Cribbs are among the workers.

“The reason that industry was even put on death row is strictly for prison management. It just gave a certain segment of that population the ability to walk down the hallway out of their cells and go to other activity,” said Tennessee Rehabilitative Initiative in Correction CEO Patricia Weiland. “These individuals, we know who they are, where they live, and it is a very minimal risk.”

TRICOR, the state's prison industry arm, said the inmates on death row entering data and other inmates in upper east Tennessee are saving taxpayers millions of dollars.

The inmates are typing data from traffic tickets, crash reports, court refunds and even some patient information for the Department of Health.

TRICOR representatives said more than 96 percent of the paperwork convicted criminals handle does not contain any information that would be considered sensitive.

There are also common-sense safeguards in place to make sure the inmates don't slip any information back to a cell.

“Would there be any way to copy it down, write it on your hand?” asked I-Team reporter Demetria Kalodimos.

“That’s one of the things we do. No. 1., they don't have access to any paper. The forms come to them numbered in order from a TRICOR supervisor; they go back into that TRICOR supervisor. They count it, they review it; they make sure all the forms are there. They’re not allowed to have pens. They don’t have access to paper. They can’t go in with anything, and they can't go out with anything,” Weiland said.

But mistakes have happened.

Patricia Johnson’s case is one reason why the Nashville women’s prison no longer offers data entry work to inmates. Johnson was sentenced to prison on 14 counts of forgery and two credit card crimes but was allowed to work at a computer.

“There was a suspicion that some of her information was coming from her job at the data plant. But how she actually got the information out, or how it was translated, I was never privy to that information,” said Weiland.

In 2003, Johnson was caught using information outside that she saw while she was inside. She's now in federal prison for identity theft.

“Well, if you think about it, as I was at a restaurant last night and passed someone my credit card, I knew well enough that restaurants don’t usually do criminal background checks on their employees. I really don’t know who I’m giving that card to. I am very confident that we have put in enough safeguards so that this information is very well-guarded,” Weiland said.

There is a waiting list among prisoners to get into the data entry program along with a long list of charges that would prohibit some from this kind of work.

Inmates still make license plates, but it’s now more of a graphic design job. Inmates also milk cows, make furniture and answer phones for the state.