More than 900 prisoners are battling the deadly flames ripping through the Los Angeles area. Their presence provides much-needed manpower to depleted fire crews but has also revived criticism of the practice, including over their low pay for dangerous work.
The prisoners are “working to cut fire lines and remove fuel to slow fire spread,” according to the California’s prison agency, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The state has long relied on incarcerated people to help fight wildfires in California, which are burning hotter and faster as the climate crisis intensifies.
But prison-reform activists have largely opposed the program. They note that the prisoners are often paid less, for a full day of work, than the state’s hourly minimum wage. And, because of their criminal records, many of the prisoners cannot get firefighting jobs after being released.
A report from the American Civil Liberties Union and the University of Chicago Law School in 2022 said that, in a five-year period, four incarcerated firefighters were killed and more than 1,000 were injured while on the job.
Here is an explanation of the program, which traces its origins to the 19th century.
How much are inmates paid?
Firefighting prisoners are members of California’s conservation fire camp program, which is operated by the corrections department, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
They earn a maximum of $10.24 per day, plus an additional $1 an hour during emergencies, according to the corrections department.
Criminal justice advocates say that California’s fire camp program — like other prison labor programs — exploits incarcerated people.
The incarcerated firefighters are paid less than minimum wage, which is $16.50 an hour in California. They also earn much less than the state’s seasonal firefighters, who can make a monthly base salary of more than $4,600, and the firefighters employed by the city of Los Angeles, whose salaries start at more than $85,000 a year.
Most of the prisoners also earn time credits: Two days are removed from their sentences for every day they serve in a fire crew.
The ACLU report quoted an incarcerated firefighter who said it felt like prison officials “dangle that freedom in front of you like a carrot on a stick” in order to get prisoners to work battling fires.
How do the camps work?
Prisoners participate in four days of classroom training and field training. They support emergency workers and the state and participate in service work. Unlike some other prison work programs in California, they volunteer and cannot be forced to do this work.
They have to be deemed “physically and mentally fit for vigorous activity” to participate, and cannot have been convicted of “rape and other sex offenses, arson, and escape history,” according to the corrections department.
Volunteers must have minimum custody status, or the lowest security classification, based on their “sustained good behavior in prison, ability to follow rules, and participation in rehabilitative programming,” the corrections department said.
Do they use different techniques?
Incarcerated firefighters wear distinctive orange firefighting gear and do not use hoses or water to fight fires.
Instead, they use “hand tools to aid in fire suppression” and also work as support staff for other emergency workers, the department said. Working as support staff, they earn a one-to-one time credit — a day off their sentences for each day spent helping crews.
Is fire camp seen as job training?
The corrections department describes the 35 camps as rehabilitation programs.
It says that participants have been employed as firefighters by government agencies and that the fire camps create paths to emergency response certifications after incarceration.
Some former prisoner-firefighters have told The New York Times that they learned useful skills, although they were frustrated by the low pay. Some told the Times that they did not expect to be hired as firefighters after they were released because of their criminal records.
In 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom approved a law that sought to make it easier for some prisoners who worked as firefighters to get their records expunged.
The intent of that law was to help prison firefighters join fire departments after their release, and some have successfully petitioned to expunge their records. Still, many others have not, in part because there are a series of hurdles for the prisoners in order to qualify for the program and to actually clear their records.
“This legislation, while a step in the right direction, still leaves unreasonable barriers in place,” the ACLU report said, such as requiring the former prisoners to spend time petitioning a court.
“Such draconian barriers take a toll on those denied work, the states they live in, and the U.S. economy as a whole,” the report said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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