California is on fire. The wildfires covering over 100,000 acres of the state are so ferocious that they’re creating their own weather patterns and are visible from space. In the Valley Fire, which is now covering 61,000 acres at five percent containment, firefighters and evacuees reported seeing embers jump roads as trees exploded and homes burned in rearview mirrors. The 71,000 acre Butte Fire, at 30 percent containment, has destroyed 1,000 structures.
Both blazes, as with other severe fires over the course of the summer, are the result of prolonged drought conditions that effectively turned the state into a tinderbox. There has been plenty of praise for the brave and heroic firefighters who are putting themselves the line to keep the flames from consuming homes and lives – already, four firefighters have been injured and fire crews suffered fatalities in earlier incidents this year. But there’s a part of the story that’s not being told: Who’s actually part of those fire crews?
Some 4,000 of the people working on fire crews in California are prison laborers. These incarcerated people are earning just $1.45 – $3.90 per day an hour while training and $1 day while laboring on the fire’s front lines beside their more well-compensated civilian counterparts.
Some are as young as 16.
Since the 1850s, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, under various names, has offered incarcerated people the opportunity to “volunteer” for work outside the prison system. In these jobs, they earn low pay, but the opportunity of time off for good behavior. The use of prison labor is a time-honored and deeply troubling tradition. Prison labor offers tantalizingly low-costs to employers, often at a profit to the state or the private company that runs the prison supplying contract labor. Some have compared prison labor – the iconic chain gang – to slavery.