Incarcerated individuals are risking their lives fighting the fires that have rocked Los Angeles, California, yet are barely receiving fair compensation, with wages that don’t reflect their labour. The racial disparities in the US affect Black and Brown people through every stage of the criminal justice system – from over-policing in the streets and neighbourhoods, all the way to programmes such as inmate firefighting.
The inmate-firefighter programme, which initially began as a wartime strategy for more manpower, has since developed into one for governments to cut costs while meeting demand and production. With complete disregard for their lives, prisoners, like those fighting the LA wildfires, are given the most strenuous and most dangerous tasks, without the same protection offered to non-incarcerated crew.
However, prisoners ‘volunteer’ for this kind of labour as it offers them an escape from the harsh prison conditions, as well as hopes for shorter sentences – though promises to that effect often turn out to be mere dangling carrots. Even after release, they are unable to apply for professional positions based on the skills they gained – i.e., become professional firefighters – because of their record and the resulting discrimination.
Prisons-for-profit – which have become commonplace not just in the US, but also in places such as the United Kingdom and Canada – are no more than 21st Century slavery, and the essentially free labour of inmates is an incentive for governments to incarcerate more people without seeking reforms to the deeply flawed criminal-justice system.
Sources:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/inmates-firefighters-la-fires-1.7429589
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-workers-low-wages-exploited
https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/publications/2022-06-15-captivelaborresearchreport.pdf