The story behind LA’s incarcerated youth firefighters

Almost a thousand incarcerated men and women – many of them young people – are at the frontlines of the fight to control the fires that have been raging across LA since last week.

These firefighters are part of a programme which the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) stresses is entirely voluntary. “Incarcerated people do not face disciplinary action if they choose not to serve their time in a fire camp,” its website states.

But the firefighters are not compensated fairly for what is an extremely dangerous and challenging type of work, earning far below minimum wage: the state pays them a daily wage between $5.80 and $10.24 and when they are assigned to an active emergency, they are treated to an extra $1 a day. Their civilian counterparts, in contrast, can expect a starting salary of $85,000.

While fighting fires is an inherently dangerous activity, a 2018 report from Time found that the risks were considerably greater for incarcerated fire-fighters compared to professional firefighters working on the same jobs; they were four times more likely to sustain cuts, bruises and fractures, and more than eight times as likely to be harmed after inhaling smoke.

Unfortunately, it’s not necessarily the case that all of their hard work will pay off down the line. Due to the stigma attached to incarceration, they often find that it’s impossible to get a job in the fire service after they are released from prison, despite having extensive experience, skills and training.

While the CDCR insists that this form of work is voluntary, the risks involved are so great, and the pay so absurdly low, that the image of incarcerated young people fighting fires seems to encapsulate the far wider problem of prisoner exploitation in the US, where, thanks to a clause in the 13th amendment, slavery is still effectively legal so long as it’s a punishment for crime.

Prison labourers are not entitled to a minimum wage, overtime pay, compensation if they’re injured on the job, or any other employment protection. In several states – including Texas and Florida – they can be paid nothing at all for their work. The average prison labourer makes $0.86 per day, and campaign group Worth Rises estimates that over $18 million is stolen in wages from these workers each year. If inmates refuse to work, they are often threatened with punitive measures, such as solitary confinement, being deprived of family visits and denied parole. Despite these appalling conditions, countless major corporations still benefit from forced prison labour.

California recently voted against a proposition which would have banned the practice (according to the ACLU, 65 per cent of incarcerated people in the state report having been forced to work) and allowed inmates to choose their jobs. This was a major disappointment for prison reform campaigners, but in recent years other states have taken steps to eradicate involuntary servitude, starting with Colorado in 2018. Since then, several other states have voted to remove forced labour exemptions from their constitutions, including Nevada, Alabama, Vermont, and Tennessee.

The last decade has also seen the growth of the prison labour movement. In 2016, a prison strike saw 20,000 incarcerated people across 12 different states refuse to show up for work. This cost the California prison system over $636,068 in revenue for every day that it lasted. In 2018, prisoners across the US organised a strike against what they described as “modern slavery”, which involved hunger strikes, boycotting profit-making prison facilities, and refusing to work.

The heroism of the incarcerated firefighters in LA has brought a lot of attention to the issue of prison labour. Kim Kardashian, posting to her Instagram Stories, urged the state of California to pay them more, and streamer Hasan Piker interviewed a group of them on his Twitch channel. It is blatantly unjust that these firefighters are getting paid less than minimum wage to risk their lives to protect other people. Hopefully, the population of California will keep this in mind the next time they vote on whether or not to abolish slavery.