Devoured by roaring flames and thick smoke, sections of Los Angeles resembled scenes from an apocalyptic movie. Firefighters endured grueling 24-hour shifts to battle the fires.  

“I was asking [the firefighters] how they were holding up, and they were pretty tired,” said Michael Hoe, Assistant Head of School, who led a care package drive to Los Angeles County Fire Department Station 102. 

Among the first responders included incarcerated firefighters, who make up 30% of California’s firefighting force. Inmates can participate in fire camps, where they live in minimum-security facilities and work as firefighters to cut fire lines and remove fuel to slow the spread of fires. Participants in the program often cite the experience as positive, compared to prison’s terrible conditions.  

Even so, the system of incarcerated firefighting reveals the cycles of incarceration perpetuated by the criminal justice system.  

One of the causes of recidivism is criminal debt. On average, an individual accrues $13,607 in criminal debt, which results from fines, restitution orders, room and board, administrative judiciary fees, phone calls, and a public defender. 

Besides imprisonment for unpaid fines, criminal debt also creates other barriers to reentry, making it harder to find housing and employment, retain public benefits, and pay child support. The debt even functions as poll tax. Criminal debt serves as a punishment on top of the punishment, trapping individuals in terrible financial situations and vicious cycles of incarceration. 

“One of the contributors highly correlated with criminal behavior is having instability [including] not having stable housing [and] access to high-quality employment,” said Professor J.J. Prescott, the University of Michigan Henry King Ransom Professor of Law, who is researching the effects of criminal record expungement. 

While individual choice is certainly part of crime, the system also actively pushes people to commit more crimes—if you and I were in similar situations, would we also fall into crime? 

Incarcerated firefighting takes its part in this economic entrapment. Fire camps pay participants $5.80 to $10.24 per day, and an extra $1 per hour when responding to emergencies, culminating in at most $26.90 over a 24-hour shift. 

Paying off $13,607 would require 506 24-hour shifts. This pay appears even more meager in comparison to the $85,315 to $124,549 annual salary for LA firefighters, which would be equivalent to $700 to $1020 per 24-hour shift. 

Firefighting is actually the best-paying prison job; California currently pays the rest of the prison labor force $0.08 to $0.37 per hour. 

Moreover, the bigger problem lies in what occurs after prison. While these firefighters actively fight fires in prison, they are often prevented from becoming firefighters after release. Apart from temporary federal or state agency positions, most fire departments require an emergency medical technician (EMT) certification. But because of the job’s access to narcotics and sharp objects, a clean criminal background check is a prerequisite. 

Yet, criminal background checks are misguided in a variety of ways. On the most basic level, they are often riddled with inaccuracies.  

“Let’s say you’re arrested and even charged with a crime, but you’re never convicted and eventually the prosecutor drops the charge, it will look like you still have a case,” Professor Prescott said. 

In addition, concerns about public safety that are used to justify background checks are unfounded. In Professor Prescott’s research, individuals with expunged records actually have a lower recidivism rate than those without. 

“The people we studied really only had one conviction, but there are also a lot of reasons to think public safety is causally improved by expungement,” Professor Prescott said. 

 Criminal records are meant to restrict access, so expungement makes it easier for individuals to find a job and housing, ultimately reentering society. A step toward expungement that has already been made is AB 2147, a bill that allows formerly incarcerated firefighters to apply for expungement once they have served their time. Yet, even so, the process for expungement often requires a lawyer and is extremely slow, and not everyone’s record gets expunged.  

 The best solution is automatic expungement, a process states like Michigan have already implemented. 

 California, let’s follow suit as well! With automatic expungement, formerly incarcerated firefighters would have been able to fill the firefighter shortage in L.A., a beneficial move for their lives and perhaps fire containment as well.  

 Incarcerated firefighters should fight fires—not a lifetime of barriers.