By Rosie Bichell
In January 2025, the Palisades and Eaton fires tore through Southern California, taking over thirty lives and destroying thousands of homes,1 including some that had been occupied by the same families for generations.2 While California is known for its wildfires and “progressive” policies around workers’ rights, it’s hard to ignore the lack of progress when incarcerated labor is brought in to fight fires. At the front lines of response efforts were approximately 1,000 incarcerated firefighters,3 including roughly fifty-five incarcerated youth.4
The state has relied on incarcerated labor for fire prevention and broader emergency response services for over a century, when the Conservation Camp Program began.5 Since then, these workers have been essential to emergency response in California, contributing 42% of the state’s total emergency response hours in 2024.6 The labor of California’s incarcerated firefighters is estimated save the state more than $90 million per year.7 Incarcerated firefighters face a risk of injury on the job that is four times higher than their peers on the outside.8 They are in even greater danger of being burned9 and have a higher level of risk of smoke inhalation compared to other firefighters. 10 Several incarcerated firefighters have been killed while responding to wildfire emergencies.11
There are multiple overlapping reasons for this increased risk, including less training for incarcerated firefighters before they are deployed to the field, generally unsafe working conditions, and faulty protective gear.12 Despite the heightened dangers, when these workers were on the front lines responding to the Palisades and Eaton fires, they were only paid less than pennies to each dollar their non-incarcerated peers earned fighting the same fires. Former incarcerated firefighters describe finding purpose in this work, but note that they were treated like “commodities,”13 noting that while firefighting is technically voluntary, 14 “the decision to take part is largely made under duress, given the alternative”15 of the violence of other kinds of prison work.
Workers on the inside are often exposed to unsafe and disabling work conditions, including being maimed and even killed while working. A majority of incarcerated workers surveyed by the ACLU in 2022 reported feeling concerned about their safety while working,16 and incarcerated workers in California reported hundreds of injuries in a four-year period, including “body parts strained, crushed, lacerated, or amputated.”17 Unlike workers on the outside, incarcerated workers have virtually no opportunity to refuse to work, even after they have acquired disabilities as a result of these conditions, lest they risk retaliation including loss of privileges or being placed in solitary confinement.18
In all, incarcerated labor across the country is estimated to produce billions of dollars’ worth of goods and prison maintenance services each year.19 California’s prison labor system exploits the labor of thousands of incarcerated workers across the state,20 and at extremely low pay (often below $1/hour)21. California voters soundly rejected the opportunity to improve conditions for incarcerated workers—firefighters and otherwise—across the state when they voted against Proposition 6 in 2024, which would have chipped away at the persistent echo of slavery by ending involuntary servitude in the state, opening the door to many more workplace protections for incarcerated workers.22 Despite this loss, there have been some steps in the right direction for California’s firefighters, including a landmark bill package signed into law last year that, among other improvements, increased incarcerated firefighters’ pay to the federal minimum wage.23
But, while higher than any other incarcerated workers pay in the state, this is still significantly below the approximately $19 per hour granted to firefighters in the community.24 Furthermore, California has declined to provide commonsense protections for incarcerated workers, including standards governing extreme heat in carceral workplaces.25 Conditions for incarcerated workers in California and elsewhere are only expected to get worse, as climate change increases the frequency and severity of natural disasters that incarcerated firefighters are deployed to respond to, and other incarcerated workers toil in increasingly deadly temperature extremes.
Incarcerated firefighters may have stepped up to respond to the Palisades and Eaton fires a year ago, but now it is time for the rest of us to step up for them and other incarcerated workers.
1 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-year-after-the-la-wildfire-disaster-key-numbers-show-how-it-unfolded-and-the-toll-left-behind
2 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/black-family-altadena-wildfires-los-angeles/
3 https://thehill.com/homenews/5081791-incarcerated-firefighters-join-california-wildfire-battle-efforts/
4 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/15/california-fire-incarcerated-firefighters-prisons
5 https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/07/inmate-firefighters-california/
6 https://www.prisonstudies.org/news/landmark-reform-california-incarcerated-firefighters-set-receive-living-wage#:~:text=Despite%20their%20critical%20contribution%2C%20incarcerated,active%20fires%20and%20in%20training.
7 https://time.com/5457637/inmate-firefighters-injuries-death/; https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/blog/fighting-more-than-fires-californias-inmate-firefighting-system-needs-reform/
8 https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/blog/fighting-more-than-fires-californias-inmate-firefighting-system-needs-reform/
9 https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/01/11/los-angeles-palisades-prisoners-firefighters
10https://time.com/5457637/inmate-firefighters-injuries-death/
11 https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/publications/2022-06-15-captivelaborresearchreport.pdf
12 https://www.vera.org/news/from-fighting-wildfires-to-digging-graves-incarcerated-workers-face-danger-on-the-job; https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/blog/fighting-more-than-fires-californias-inmate-firefighting-system-needs-reform/
13 https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/blog/fighting-more-than-fires-californias-inmate-firefighting-system-needs-reform/
14 https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/01/11/los-angeles-palisades-prisoners-firefighters
15 https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/01/11/los-angeles-palisades-prisoners-firefighters
16 https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/publications/2022-06-15-captivelaborresearchreport.pdf
17 https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/publications/2022-06-15-captivelaborresearchreport.pdf
18 https://law.ucdavis.edu/aoki-blog/incarcerated-worker
19 https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploitation-of-incarcerated-workers; https://www.epi.org/publication/rooted-racism-prison-labor/
20 https://www.prisonstudies.org/news/landmark-reform-california-incarcerated-firefighters-set-receive-living-wage
21 https://prismreports.org/2025/04/29/incarcerated-workers-california-work-slowdown/
22 https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/blog/fighting-more-than-fires-californias-inmate-firefighting-system-needs-reform/
23 https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/10/prison-firefighter-new-laws/
24 https://www.prisonstudies.org/news/landmark-reform-california-incarcerated-firefighters-set-receive-living-wage#:~:text=Despite%20their%20critical%20contribution%2C%20incarcerated,active%20fires%20and%20in%20training
25 https://www.vera.org/news/californias-new-workplace-heat-standards-dont-apply-to-prisons-reflecting-harmful-neglect-across-the-united-states