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$10.24 a day to risk their lives – and a lot of pride: incarcerated LA firefighters speak out
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
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Everyone's always quick to attack Cali for literally anything.
The firefighter / emergency reponder program is a volunteer position. Prisoners are not forced to join. They willingly joined, learned about the job, and are expected to help out when needed.
Everyone likes to complain about this as forced slavery, but this is one of the better programs inmates can volunteer in. They get experience, rehabilitation, and work towards emergency certificates that they can then use to get hired once they are released.
The other states have no comparable rehabilitation program. They'll gladly throw you out to the streets with a criminal record and let you suffer because a criminal record reduces your chance of getting a job by a significant amount.
Are there plenty of issues with the program still? Yes. There's long, grueling hours that comes with the nature of emergency response, bad pay, and a multitude of other issues, but a lot of it ties with how the prison system works and will take a lot of reform to set things right. I'm confident in Cali working towards those things though. This state has always been working for the people, even if it's a slow and tedious process.
And for those who actually care, you can read more about the program here:
https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/facility-locator/conservation-camps/faq-conservation-fire-camp-program/
It should be an embarrassment that you're letting people fight the fires threatening your homes and paying them literal peanuts. Other areas do similar shit and should also be embarrassed but that doesn't lessen the embarrassment that Californians should feel.
People are losing their fucking homes and these folks are fighting to keep them standing while being paid peanuts.
Yall should be fighting to make sure they get fair compensation even if that's not wholly available to them until after they've been released/granted probation.
I've already stated that I think this volunteer position should have better benefits and pay. Despite that, I will stand behind this program being a step towards the right direction. This program is far from exploitation. It's not an embarrassment, and one of the few rehabilitation programs that actually attempts to help inmates get back on their feet after prison.
If you really think other states do any similar programs you're grossly mistaken. Except for a couple other blue states, the other states imprison people in for profit prisons, so they can lease forced labor for pennies. There's no comparable program in the states, and if you find a problem with the pay, you should be looking at literally everywhere else in the states that uses inmates for farm labor because those states refuse to pay people proper wages. Not to mention the fact that those are involuntary labor.
I'd clarify - I don't wish this program didn't exist I just think the monetary compensation is an embarrassment. I'd much prefer to see these volunteers more properly compensated to set them up for post incarceration life.
That's reasonable. It'll take a long time, they'll have to dismantle and rebuild almost the entirety of the prison system, but that's a goal we should be working for.
If prisons can rent out prisoners it creates a reason for prisons to have a lot of prisoners.
This by itself sets a dangerous precedent because they can just lobby against the people. Anti drug laws get them a lot of manpower so you'll see a lot of that. Literally lobbying for anything that gets more people in jail is a win for them.
This is already a motive for states/municipalities to try to have federal prisons built in their borders. The inmates get counted in the census and their numbers are used to determine appropriations, and they don't vote so you don't even have to pretend to care about them!
cool motive, still slavery
Literally in my first paragraph I said it was a volunteer program
If you want to argue about forced inmate labor being the modern day slavery sure but that's not related to this program at all
"It's one of the better forced labor systems in our over-incarcerated racist system"
-A true hero for the downtrodden, baguette