Incarcerated fire crews: A mutually beneficial solution
Written by Avani Kongetira
As wildfires rage through Los Angeles largely uncontained, people are fanning the flames of a different conversation in true Californian fashion, pointing to incarcerated firefighter camps as evidence of rampant exploitation in prisons and likening their circumstances to involuntary servitude, or even slavery. A recent article by the New York Times highlighted the incarcerated people who risk their lives “for just dollars a day.” This kind of rhetoric only serves to inflame bleeding hearts while de-emphasizing the work program’s extensive value to both the state and incarcerated participants.
California and its residents rely on this group of incarcerated people to carry out wildfire prevention measures and assist professional firefighters during fires, floods, and other natural disasters. Inmates can volunteer to join fire crews as part of the Conservation Camp Program run by the California Department of Corrections. Criticism of this program does have some logical grounding; a reasonable increase in compensation and removal of obstacles hindering post-release employment is only fair.
However, using the fire camps to illustrate a larger issue of prisoner exploitation sidelines serious issues like an already-strained state budget and residents shouldering the tax burden that pays for incarcerating people.
The fire crews are made up of eligible volunteers with fewer than eight years left on their sentence. They earn anywhere between $5.80 to $10.24 a day, with an additional $1 per hour when responding to an active emergency. One of the more favorable incentives for participation exists in the form of time credits: For every day spent on a fire crew, inmates can wipe two days off of their prison sentence. Calling the program “exploitative” makes it seem as though it forces prisoners into participating, when in reality, they are taking advantage of an opportunity to earn money and reduce their sentence.
For the level of physical risk and exertion involved, the wages are undoubtedly low — but relatively luxurious in comparison to typical prison jobs, most of which pay less than $0.74 per hour. Given the high cost to taxpayers of simply housing prisoners — a whopping annual $132,000 per inmate — granting them a drastic wage increase would add to the CDCR’s financial burden.
Just last year, Californians voted to reject Proposition 6, which would have banned involuntary servitude in prisons and potentially forced them to increase wages for voluntary work programs at a cost to taxpayers. Paying inmates minimum wage not only defeats the purpose of a modest prison lifestyle but would cost the state an estimated $1.5 billion per year, which is why a proposed measure similar to Proposition 6 failed in 2022.
While it is imperative for prisoners to have sufficient time to focus on rehabilitation during their sentences to reduce the likelihood of recidivism, participating in prison work programs is just as valuable in the post-incarceration job search. Members of the CDCR’s firefighting program often find their work to be a form of rehabilitation in itself and a welcome change from the overcrowded prison environment.
Hopping onto a bandwagon and criticizing initiatives like the fire camps does not add anything worthwhile to the conversation about prison conditions. Rather than throwing around accusations of exploitation and doing away with a program that has proved beneficial to all parties involved, the state should work toward providing former inmates with an easier path to reentering society and putting newfound skills to use after serving their sentences.
In 2021, California took a step toward accomplishing this goal when bill AB 2147 went into effect, allowing incarcerated individuals to clear their criminal records after serving out their sentences in a Conservation Camp Program. Still, in the last four years, the state has not seen a noticeable increase in the number of former prisoners making their way into entry-level firefighter positions.
This is partly because AB 2147 does not provide an automatic start to the expungement process after a prisoner’s release. Instead, former inmates have to endure the lengthy process of petitioning a court which then decides whether or not to grant the request.
Reducing bureaucratic red tape is a much more effective way of helping incarcerated people who have completed their sentences with good conduct and contributed to society in the process. Automatically starting the expungement process upon an eligible prisoner’s release would mitigate delay and make it easier for former inmates to find employment and work their way up in municipal fire departments. Additionally, state law blocks felons from obtaining certification to become emergency medical technicians, which most fire departments require. Granting exceptions to this law would expand the range of possible employment outside of federal and state agencies like Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service, and reduce the gap between the number of past fire crew members and formerly incarcerated professional firefighters.
Opponents of the fire camps highlight the subminimum wages offered to inmates, with some invoking a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. They argue that offering expungement blurs the line between the program being voluntary and necessary.
To that point, starting over with a clean record is likely the most sought-after reward in the aftermath of a prison sentence, and it is perfectly reasonable for this to be attainable for those who spend the duration of their sentence giving back to society — a society that essentially pays for their food, shelter, and rehabilitation. Potential expungement is simply an incentive, not a means of forcing prisoners into life-threatening involuntary servitude.
In truth, there are many more pressing issues to address at the moment, with people losing their homes and loved ones to seemingly impenetrable wildfires. As inmates benefit from the rehabilitative qualities of the camps, California also benefits immensely from their assistance in fighting the flames. Eliminating the fire crews altogether would be a disservice to inmates and state residents alike. Rather, proper compensation in the form of eased reintegration post-release is the most plausible way to continue this program in good conscience.
LA fire response demonstrates epidemic of incarcerated labor exploitation
Written by Adalia Luo & Jordan Nakagawa
The Los Angeles fires are a rampaging environmental catastrophe. For days on end, first responders have been working non-stop to contain the flames. However, their hard labor isn’t the only way the City of LA is controlling the disaster: Thousands of incarcerated people are being deployed across LA to rectify this climate catastrophe, facing consequences for climate crimes they did not commit. This crisis has made unignorable the nefarious carceral systems in place through which institutions access cheap or free labor: incarcerated workers.
Nearly one third of the firefighting effort in LA is composed of incarcerated laborers, who have the option of working either 12- or 24-hour shifts. The program used to employ incarcerated workers for wildfire response, the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation Fire Camps, defends its exploitative program by claiming it is voluntary, offering inmates one or two days off their sentence for every day of service.
Laborers receive next to nothing in compensation — less than $30 per 24-hour shift — for doing a job which is already heroically high-risk, but even more so for such negligently undertrained workers. According to prison labor researchers, these workers are selected first to handle the most hazardous crisis areas after minimal training and degradingly unreliable access to protective gear. A 2018 Time piece reported that inmate firefighters are more than four times as likely to incur “object-induced injuries” and more than eight times as likely to face inhalation damage compared to career firefighters. Cumbersome prison organization systems then prevent injured incarcerated workers from seeking civil redress or healthcare for the harms done to them by these working conditions, leaving many with permanent disabilities and unable to enter the work force — the stated intention of these work-release programs.
However, because few other work-release programs offer this level of incentive, many incarcerated people are manipulated into framing this “volunteer opportunity” as an ultimatum, trading in their quality of life, and in some instances, life itself, for a lowered sentence.
Worse yet, these climate disasters that incarcerated workers are sent in as sacrifices to “fix” are perpetuated by the very institutions which benefit from their free labor and deaths: Big Business and its governmental collaborators.
The bombing of Palestine by the Israeli government has produced 281,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide alone. While the United States sends billions of dollars to Israel to fund this bombing, they disinvest in critical infrastructure at home; last month, the LA Fire Department’s budget was cut by $17.6 million. When climate disaster inevitably strikes, they deploy thousands of incarcerated people to put out fires that rage bigger and bigger as more American bombs drop overseas. This is collusion at the highest level, with incarcerated people as the collateral.
As with any discussion on the American carceral system, the overrepresentation of people of color and unhoused people cannot be understated. The U.S. never truly abolished slavery; the operations of the prison system are simply a transformation of this oppression. Forcing incarcerated people — whose criminalization is often the result of systemic food and housing insecurity enacted against them — to put themselves in harm’s way with little to no compensation is, in the best cases, indentured servitude, and in the worst, slavery.
In the wake of entire communities devastated by massive material loss, unlivable air quality, and ash falling from the sky, the LA County district attorney is pursuing a truly satirical form of “justice”: making looting a felony. The fact is, our nation does and will always do everything it can to criminalize marginalized populations and uphold the hegemony — whether it be by funneling more innocent people into modern slavery or suppressing their voices in the polls — because it benefits the elite. This is why the Three-Fifths Compromise was accepted, why a majority of those with a criminal record still cannot vote, and why Black and Brown people disproportionately experience wealth and education disparities; the inhumane price of free human labor is easily paid when these institutions do not see the marginalized as humans at all.
Governor Gavin Newsom recently criminalized homelessness; coincidentally — or not — a majority of Californians are one missed paycheck away from being unhoused. With the passing of this legislation, the state is no longer attempting to hide how they enjoy reaping the benefits they sow from making criminals — slaves — from Black and Brown people.
The justifications for this range widely, but at the heart of this is the notion that all people branded “criminals” deserve to face punishment, even if said punishment strips them of their humanity. Regardless of if you believe in this deeply unforgiving and anti-rehabilitative take, it still does not justify blanket inhumane treatment of the incarcerated when so many are unjustly criminalized. As just one example, tens of thousands remain imprisoned for cannabis charges, despite California’s complete decriminalization of the substance in 2016.
These fire camps are not a means for inmates to “pay their debt to society”; they are pernicious deployment systems enacted for and by governments and big business to clean up the messes they make. From cleaning up oil spills on behalf of Big Oil to fighting wildfires caused by infrastructural disinvestment by said government, incarcerated workers are treated as less than human to protect mansions and Emmys. The government holds a near-monopolistic power to invent and modify the meaning of “criminal action” to suit their current “needs,” creating an economy where prison labor can be bought and sold for the right campaign donation.
The LA fire response is not the epicenter of exploited prison labor, but it is one more egregious example to add to our understanding of just how deep-rooted systems of modern slavery are in the American justice system. Fighting against incarcerated labor exploitation is the fight for the rights of our most marginalized populations, whose suffering we rely on to maintain our own faux senses of “peace.” To accept injustice for them today is to accept future injustice for us, our neighbors, and our communities — and it will only get worse. In order to achieve true justice, we must turn our attention to addressing the causes and conditions of crime: poverty, inequality, inaccessibility to education, healthcare, housing, and other structural failures.
