Though it’s no longer front-page news, I’ve been sitting with something that refuses to settle: incarcerated individuals on the front lines of the Los Angeles wildfires.
On its face, the story is often framed as inspirational, and in many ways, it is.
Firefighting is real, skilled labor. It saves lives. It offers training that can translate into future careers. For some incarcerated people, it provides a sense of purpose, contribution, and dignity that prison otherwise strips away.
But the framing stops there. And that’s a problem.
The Pay Gap No One Wants to Talk About
Incarcerated firefighters battling wildfires in California earn between $5.80 and $10.24 per day.
Let that sit.
The average non-incarcerated firefighter in California earns around $28 per hour.
These are not symbolic tasks. These are not training simulations. These are frontline, physically dangerous, trauma-exposing roles—performed under the same smoke, heat, and risk conditions as their non-incarcerated counterparts.
Yet the compensation is not even remotely comparable.
“Voluntary” Work Inside a System Without Real Choice
Supporters of the program often emphasize that participation is voluntary.
No one is forced to sign up.
But the word “voluntary” becomes slippery inside a system where choice itself is constrained.
When incarcerated people face:
- Extremely limited job options
- Wages that average pennies per hour
- Outrageous commissary prices
- Inflated phone and communication costs
Then one of the highest-paying prison jobs begins to look less like a free choice and more like economic coercion.
Consent without meaningful alternatives is not consent.
It is compliance under pressure.
Skill Without Access, Risk Without Reward
Another uncomfortable truth: many incarcerated firefighters are barred from becoming firefighters after release due to criminal record restrictions, despite having performed the job under emergency conditions.
So the state is willing to:
- Train them
- Deploy them
- Risk their lives
…but not willing to let them fully benefit from the skills they gained. That contradiction should unsettle all of us.
Exploitation Wearing the Mask of Opportunity
This is not a new pattern.
It mirrors prison labor across the country—where people are paid fractions of real wages while performing essential work that sustains public systems.
When the pay gap is this extreme, when participation is shaped by deprivation, and when the financial benefits flow upward while the risk stays with the incarcerated person, we need to call it what it is:
Exploitation dressed up as rehabilitation.
- The phone costs are still too high.
- Commissary prices are still predatory.
- Families are still paying the price.
And when people risk their lives for $10 a day, the line between “work program” and modern forced labor becomes dangerously thin.
This isn’t about questioning the courage or intentions of incarcerated firefighters.
It’s about questioning a system that relies on their labor while refusing to value it.
Read the article here.
