What will be left of the City of Angels when this hellscape is over?
The financial, emotional, cultural, physical and spiritual tolls exacted by the fires ravaging Los Angeles are beyond extreme and will only increase as the fires keep burning. In the wake of such vast destruction, the question arises: What will be left of the City of Angels when this hellish experience is over?
It’s still too soon to know what LA’s future will be. The first thing to do is contain and put out the fires. The size and number of the blazes – five at the moment – have stretched LA’s firefighting resources to the breaking point. More firefighters are desperately needed, and one source in particular has been getting a lot of coverage lately: California’s prisons.
According to BBC News, nearly 1,000 inmates are serving as firefighters courtesy “of a long-running volunteer program led by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).” The prisoners are “drawn from among the 35 Conservation Fire Camps run by the state, minimum-security facilities where inmates serve their time and receive training.” Participants in the program are also trained to deal with floods and other natural disasters.
The program dates to 1915, and it turns out that prisoners have long been used as firefighters. The Guardian (UK) mentions that CDCR crews have at times accounted for as much as 30% of the wildfire force in the state. Their work has involved “cutting fire lines and removing fuel from behind structures to slow fire spread” the CDCR said.
Their help is most definitely welcome, but critics view the program as exploitative. USA Today notes that
Inmate firefighters earn between $5.80 and $10.24 daily, plus
$1 per hour during emergencies, and receive two days off their
sentence for each day served…In comparison, the lowest-
level, seasonal firefighters with Cal Fire made a monthly
base salary of $3,672 to $4,643, plus $1,824 to $2,306
extended duty week compensation paid every four weeks.
When responding to disasters, they may earn $26.90 over a 24-hour shift, according to the CDCR.
In other words, inmate firefighters face the same dangers and take the same risks as non-incarcerated firefighters for a mere fraction of the salary.
Calls for increased wages for inmate firefighters are being heard more and more frequently as the LA fires burn on. Such calls are part of a larger demand for better wages for inmates for work both in and out of prison. NPR refers to a 2022 report from the American Civil Liberties Union and The University of Chicago’s Global Human Rights Clinic: “While most inmates receive little to no pay ‘nationwide, incarcerated workers produce more than $2 billion a year in goods and commodities and over $9 billion a year in services for the maintenance of the prisons where they are warehoused’.”
This is just one more aspect of America’s prison system that needs a thorough overhauling. In 2018, Colorado banned unpaid prison labor. Nevada followed in 2024 – the same year California voters rejected such a ban.
For the moment it’s enough to simply fight the fires. But when the ashes have cooled it’ll be time to address a morass of issues stemming from some of the worst fires in California’s history. Let’s hope that the economic rights of justice-involved firefighters – and the question of prison labor in general – is near the top of the list.
