{"id":98861,"date":"2025-01-27T10:24:58","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T15:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=98861"},"modified":"2025-01-27T17:29:31","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T22:29:31","slug":"opinion-jordan-house-and-lydia-dobson-discuss-the-roles-prisoners-play-fighting-california-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2025\/01\/opinion-jordan-house-and-lydia-dobson-discuss-the-roles-prisoners-play-fighting-california-wildfires\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION: Jordan House and Lydia Dobson discuss the roles prisoners play fighting California wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece written by Jordan House, Assistant Professor of Labour Studies at Brock University, and Lydia Dobson, Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa, originally appeared in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

As\u00a0wildfires continue to burn in and around Los Angeles, the fact that many of the firefighters battling the blazes\u00a0are inmates from California\u2019s prison system\u00a0has drawn significant attention in\u00a0news coverage.<\/p>\n

While the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) claims their fire camp program is\u00a0voluntary and provides prisoners with meaningful opportunities, research demonstrates otherwise.<\/p>\n

Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), argue that the program exploits incarcerated individuals, labelling it as \u201cmodern-day slavery.\u201d One ex-prisoner described it as \u201cinvoluntary servitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

The use of prison labour is particularly concerning, given\u00a0Black Americans are incarcerated at nearly five times the rate of white Americans\u00a0in state prisons. In 12 states, more than half of the prison population is Black.<\/p>\n

California prisoners are\u00a0denied access to minimum wage provisions, prevented from forming labour unions\u00a0and denied access to other workplace safety regulations. They\u2019re also\u00a0more likely to be injured or to die on the job\u00a0than non-incarcerated firefighters. Their wages are\u00a0capped at US$29.80 per day, compared to non-incarcerated firefighters, who earn up to US$358 daily, not including overtime.<\/p>\n

While serving in a fire crew gives prisoners the chance to shave time off of their sentences and have records expunged,\u00a0neither of these benefits is guaranteed. Both are contingent on the\u00a0CDCR or county jails deeming the service in a fire camp to be \u201csuccessful.\u201d This leaves prisoners vulnerable to being denied these benefits, despite risking injury or death.<\/p>\n

Prison labour in the Canadian context<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some Canadian coverage\u00a0of the L.A. fires has noted that provincial prisoners in British Columbia also work in a wildfire suppression program. However, little has been said about how that work relates to the larger system of prison labour in the country.<\/p>\n

Like their counterparts south of the border, Canadian prisoners are engaged in various forms of labour, including wildfire management,\u00a0but are denied basic rights as workers.<\/p>\n

In 1975, Donald Griggs, then-superintendent of Ontario\u2019s Monteith Correctional Complex, told the\u00a0Globe and Mail\u00a0that prison labour had been used in response to fires from time immemorial: \u201cWhen a fire got bad, the jails were emptied and the men were shoved out on the fire line.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the late 1960s, programs for prisoners to support wildfire suppression had become more formalized. During that time, for example, prisoners at Beaver Creek, a federal prison in Ontario, participated in regional bushfire response efforts. Working in the program offered prisoners, who were paid $1.25 an hour,\u00a0a chance at some \u201caction.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the mid-1970s, some Ontario prisoners earned up to $50 a day battling wildfires. Today, however, most prisoners don\u2019t earn anything close to those wages. Federal prisoner pay maxes out at\u00a0$6.90 per day.<\/p>\n

In the rare situations where prisoners are relatively well-compensated, prison labour still offers employers unique benefits. Prisoners\u2019 lack of freedom and\u00a0limited ability to refuse work\u00a0is touted as an advantage. Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) officials have argued that, compared to volunteer firefighters, prisoners \u201care always in one place and available for duty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prison labour in British Columbia<\/strong><\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s most prominent use of prison labour to manage wildfires is in B.C. While prisoners served in direct firefighting roles in the past, today provincial prisoners, who make between $2 and $8 per day, play a critical support role for wildfire-fighting crews by maintaining equipment and fire camps.<\/p>\n

Notably,\u00a0all the participating prisoners have \u201copen custody\u201d status, having \u201cbehaved exceptionally well during previous experience on other community work crews.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Canada, prisoners are supposed to work as part of their rehabilitation, not as punishment. However, the reality often prioritizes the needs of employers over the rehabilitation of prisoners.\u00a0A review of the CSC\u2019s Federal Work Release Program, which was established in 1992 and included a\u00a0firefighting component, notes:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not necessary that the work be directly related to the offender\u2019s correctional plan\u2026work release is a very flexible program that allows correctional managers to respond to community projects and local needs for labour.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is particularly concerning given that\u00a0ex-prisoners often struggle to secure gainful employment upon release, despite their participation in employment programming.<\/p>\n

Prison labour as a response to climate disasters<\/strong><\/p>\n

While the idea of keeping people incarcerated to maintain a labour force to fight disasters might sound like something out of science fiction, it\u2019s not mere speculation.\u00a0Responses to climate catastrophes like the L.A. fires\u00a0demand huge amounts of resources and labour.<\/p>\n

Former U.S. vice-president Kamala Harris, as California attorney general,\u00a0led a campaign to defy a U.S. Supreme Court order to reduce the state\u2019s prison population\u00a0partly because decarceration would \u201cseverely impact fire camp participation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Canada, prison labour has similarly been used in disaster responses. Most recently, CORCAN, the federal prison industry program,\u00a0has been contracted to build temporary housing for people displaced by the 2024 wildfires in Jasper, Alta.<\/p>\n

Just as Black, Indigenous and racialized people in the U.S. are more likely to become incarcerated, these are also the populations that\u00a0suffer disproportionately from the impacts of wildfires. Studies have shown that\u00a0Indigenous communities in Canada are the hardest hit by wildfires, while\u00a0Indigenous Peoples make up the fastest growing prison populations.<\/p>\n

Much like the U.S.,\u00a0Canada also disproportionately incarcerates Black, Indigenous and racialized people, while also depriving incarcerated labourers of access to minimum wage rights, workplace safety provisions and the right to unionize.<\/p>\n

The root cause of many of these disasters \u2014 climate change \u2014 is\u00a0disproportionately driven by the world\u2019s wealthiest elites. The use of prison labour to fight wildfires only further perpetuates the systemic inequalities exacerbated by\u00a0climate injustice\u00a0and reflects a continuation of indentured servitude.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jordan House, Assistant Professor of Labour Studies at Brock University, and Lydia Dobson, Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa, recently wrote a piece published in The Conversation about the implications of prison inmates battling wildfires in California as well as the participation of Canadian prisoners in wildfire suppression programs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,38],"tags":[8767,5512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98861"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98861"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98870,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98861\/revisions\/98870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}