$1 An Hour to Fight Largest Fire in CA History: Are Prison Firefighting Programs Slave Labor?Califor

$1 An Hour to Fight Largest Fire in CA History: Are Prison Firefighting Programs Slave Labor?

California relies on thousands of prisoners, including many women, to battle the wildfires burning statewide. Prisoner firefighters gain training and earn time off of their sentences for good behavior, but critics of the program say the state is exploiting prisoners’ eagerness to earn time for early release. While salaried firefighters earn an annual mean wage of $74,000 plus benefits, inmates earn just $2 per day with an additional $1 per hour when fighting an active fire—and most are barred from applying for firefighting jobs once freed. According to some estimates, California avoids spending about $80-$100 million a year by using prison labor to fight its biggest environmental problem. 

Romarilyn Ralston is one of the former California prisoners calling for major changes to the program:

The firefighter training that you receive while you are incarcerated, you don’t get enough of the training needed to apply to CAL FIRE. Because of licensing, incarcerated firefighters or folks with a criminal record, once they are released, are not able to get an EMT license, and that’s one of the critical pieces to applying for these jobs post-release. … 

You have the experience, the frontline experience. You have placed your life on the line. You have protected California. You have saved lives and property. But they don’t take into consideration all of that experience that you have on the front line. They are still looking for a certain degree of training and licensing in order to employ you. And we think that that’s wrong.

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