Los Angeles’ incarcerated population is playing an essential role in protecting the city.
Wildfires that were first reported on Jan. 7 in Palisades, Los Angeles continue to grow and devastate the American city, having destroyed countless homes and lives. Everyone is doing their part to fight the flames, including incarcerated fire crew , even at unthinkable costs.
The Conservation (fire) Camp Program, run by the California Department of Corrections (CDCR) and Rehabilitation, in cooperation with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, allows eligible incarcerated individuals to work in emergency response in exchange for daily compensation and the chance to reduce their sentences.
Programs like these are crucial as they provide rehabilitation resources and reintegration opportunities for incarcerated individuals. Aspects of humanization become lost when convicted felons spend so much time in confinement. Even following their release back into society, disenfranchisement and bleak employment prospects are commonly faced by incarcerated individuals. Thus, chances to contribute to the community and interact with outside nature and society are invaluable to inmates during their sentence.
For the inmates involved, their generally positive reception of this program and its various benefits paints it as a necessary and satisfactory practice, yet a further examination of the low pay, acute risk factors, and alternative options suggest the obvious problematic matter: it’s an undeniably exploitative arrangement.
For such an active city, L.A. faces vast understaffing in its fire department, compared to other American cities, which have approximately 1.5 to 1.8 firefighters per 1,000 residents. L.A. currently only has 3,400 firefighters to protect a population of 4 million. It’s difficult to ignore the nation’s conscious decision to turn to prison labour, when more professionally trained and fairly paid firefighters are in such high demand.
In contrast to incarcerated firefighters, who earn between $5.80 and $10.24 per day, the average L.A. firefighter makes anywhere from $85, 784 to $124, 549 USD per year. A rare exception still worth mentioning is private, for-hire firefighters, who can get paid a whopping $2,000 per hour for protecting expensive homes.
Further, in emergencies such as wildfires, firefighters’ shifts can last up to 24 hours. Also, the nature of wildfire protection poses more dangers—like smoke inhalation and object-related injuries—to inmates, who are four times as likely than professional firefighters to incur such risks.
These disparities raise issues of how society views and undervalues labour from the incarcerated population, which only deepens the division between the former and latter.
Although recruitment to the Conservation Camp Program is voluntary, for many inmates the dangerous option is the obvious choice. For incarcerated individuals to risk their lives helping in wildfires over spending their days confined within prison walls is extremely telling about the inhumane conditions they experience in the institutions.
If the united efforts in combatting the L.A. wildfires have demonstrated anything, it’s that job opportunities and reintegration programs for the incarceration population are necessary and rewarding for society at large. But this doesn’t mean they’re excused from the unethical and inequitable treatment of inmates.
We must give all firefighters the compensation and recognition they deserve, regardless of their status in society.
—Journal Editorial Board
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