California depends on prison labor to deal with climate disasters—Canada must avoid a similar model

As wildfires continue to burn in and around Los Angeles, the fact that many of the firefighters battling the blazes are inmates from California’s prison system has drawn significant attention in news coverage.

While the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) claims their fire camp program is voluntary and provides prisoners with meaningful opportunities, research demonstrates otherwise.

Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), argue that the program exploits incarcerated individuals, labeling it as “modern-day slavery.” One ex-prisoner described it as “involuntary servitude.”

The use of prison labor is particularly concerning, given Black Americans are incarcerated at nearly five times the rate of white Americans in state prisons. In 12 states, more than half of the prison population is Black.

California prisoners are denied access to minimum wage provisions, prevented from forming labor unions and denied access to other workplace safety regulations. They’re also more likely to be injured or to die on the job than non-incarcerated firefighters. Their wages are capped at US$29.80 per day, compared to non-incarcerated firefighters, who earn up to US$358 daily, not including overtime.

While serving in a fire crew gives prisoners the chance to shave time off of their sentences and have records expunged, neither of these benefits is guaranteed. Both are contingent on the CDCR or county jails deeming the service in a fire camp to be “successful.” This leaves prisoners vulnerable to being denied these benefits, despite risking injury or death.

Prison labor in the Canadian context

Some Canadian coverage of 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 labor in the country.

Like their counterparts south of the border, Canadian prisoners are engaged in various forms of labor, including wildfire management, but are denied basic rights as workers.

In 1975, Donald Griggs, then-superintendent of Ontario’s Monteith Correctional Complex, told the Globe and Mail that prison labor had been used in response to fires from time immemorial: “When a fire got bad, the jails were emptied and the men were shoved out on the fire line.”

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, a chance at some “action.”

By the mid-1970s, some Ontario prisoners earned up to $50 a day battling wildfires. Today, however, most prisoners don’t earn anything close to those wages. Federal prisoner pay maxes out at $6.90 per day.

In the rare situations where prisoners are relatively well-compensated, prison labor still offers employers unique benefits. Prisoners’ lack of freedom and limited ability to refuse work is touted as an advantage. Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) officials have argued that, compared to volunteer firefighters, prisoners “are always in one place and available for duty.”

Prison labor in British Columbia

Canada’s most prominent use of prison labor 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.

Notably, all the participating prisoners have “open custody” status, having “behaved exceptionally well during previous experience on other community work crews.”

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. A review of the CSC’s Federal Work Release Program, which was established in 1992 and included a firefighting component, notes: “It is not necessary that the work be directly related to the offender’s correctional plan…work release is a very flexible program that allows correctional managers to respond to community projects and local needs for labor.”

This is particularly concerning given that ex-prisoners often struggle to secure gainful employment upon release, despite their participation in employment programming.

Prison labor as a response to climate disasters

While the idea of keeping people incarcerated to maintain a labor force to fight disasters might sound like something out of science fiction, it’s not mere speculation. Responses to climate catastrophes like the L.A. fires demand huge amounts of resources and labor.

Former U.S. vice-president Kamala Harris, as California attorney general, led a campaign to defy a U.S. Supreme Court order to reduce the state’s prison population partly because decarceration would “severely impact fire camp participation.”

In Canada, prison labor has similarly been used in disaster responses. Most recently, CORCAN, the federal prison industry program, has been contracted to build temporary housing for people displaced by the 2024 wildfires in Jasper, Alta.

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

Much like the U.S., Canada also disproportionately incarcerates Black, Indigenous and racialized people, while also depriving incarcerated laborers of access to minimum wage rights, workplace safety provisions and the right to unionize.

The root cause of many of these disasters—climate change—is disproportionately driven by the world’s wealthiest elites. The use of prison labor to fight wildfires only further perpetuates the systemic inequalities exacerbated by climate injustice and reflects a continuation of indentured servitude.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.