Unsung Heroes: California’s Inmate Firefighters
By Camille Rohde, February 16, 2025
California’s state network of first responders includes over two thousand inmate firefighters who frequently put themselves in harm’s way to fight ever-increasing wildfires. These inmate firefighters are severely underpaid, and face a disproportionately dangerous job compared to civilian firefighters.
Inmate firefighter trainees form rank and file at one of the conservation fire camps jointly run by the Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACFD), CalFire and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Image courtesy of the CDCR Office of Public and Employee Relations (OPEC)
An unprecedented wildfire season has wreaked havoc across Greater Los Angeles County, with the recent Palisades and Eaton Fires collectively scorching over 37,728 acres of land and claiming over twenty-nine lives. The record-smashing Palisades and Eaton Fires erupted on January 7th, 2025, and took first responders over three weeks to fully contain. As the ashes smolder, over twelve thousand structures are in ruins, and many miles of coastline will remain closed to the public for extensive periods of time due to toxic fire debris and runoff. While projections are still emerging, recent estimates put the cost of the damage at approximately 250 billion dollars. Successful containment and mitigation of ever-increasing wildfires such as these is the result of the combined efforts and moxie of first responders, medical personnel, humanitarian organizations, and local governments. However, a critical facet of this coalition often goes unrecognized: the inmate firefighters on the frontlines.
While various forms of institutionalized prison labor have existed across the United States for well over a century, California’s network of inmate fire crews was a novelty at its time of inception. Dubbed the Conservation (Fire) Camp Program (Fire Camp Program for short), the program operates a coalition of inmate fire crews that is jointly facilitated by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), the Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACFD), and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Cal Fire is responsible for the direct supervision of inmate trainees and firefighters at the program’s thirty-five training and boarding facilities, known as “fire camps”, dotted across the state of California . The fire camps are modeled after military basic training camps, and serve as locales to train and certify inmates as first responders.
The initial Fire Camp Program dates back to 1915, but the program didn’t truly gain footing until World War II. During the war, many individuals who served in California’s firefighting crews had been conscripted to fight overseas, leaving a labor gap that urgently needed filling. Starting in 1946, the CDCR decided to close that labor gap bypulling fire crew candidates from the Los Angeles County inmate population, and proceeded to populate over forty "interim camps" with low-level offenders. At the “interim camps,” the inmates were trained in first responder skills such as search and rescue (SAR) and basic first aid, and were deployed to combat active emergencies across the state of California- where they removed hazardous debris, doused blazes, and conducted SAR missions. The Fire Camp Program proved resoundingly successful and remained a steadfast fixture of the CDCR after World War II. Today, the program boasts over forty-four camps across the state of California, which actively house, train, and deploy inmate fire crews that respond to local, state, and federal emergencies. The success of California’s fire camp program has resulted in copycat inmate fire crew programs emerging in states across the country, such as the pilot program in Boise, Idaho launched in 2000.
Maps depicting Fire Camp locations in Northern, Central and Southern California. As of 2025, there are a total of forty-four active Fire Camps that collectively host over two thousand inmate firefighters.
The Fire Camp Program has long drawn criticism from human rights organizations, that have notably included accusations of wage theft and extreme endangerment of inmates deployed on the frontlines. To combat the most recent wildfires surging through Los Angeles County, over a thousand inmate firefighters were deployed, and were estimated to make up nearly a third of all firefighters who battled the Eaton and Palisades blazes. Despite making up a significant portion of the state’s fire crews, California’s inmate firefighters only earn 5.80 to ten dollars an hour on the job, with a measly one dollar per hour bonus in hazard pay while serving on the frontlines in an active emergency. Recently, inmate firefighters stationed at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California, made under thirty-five dollars each for a single twenty-four hour shift. It's common for inmate firefighters to work twenty-four hour shifts without significant breaks, and without access to the level of personal protective equipment (PPE) their civilian counterparts receive. To add insult to injury, the mass deployment of inmate firefighters comes only a couple of months after a ballot measure to end inmate servitude in the state failed to pass. With the failure of this ballot measure (Proposition Six), California remains in the majority of American states that permit the practice of prison labor. In fact, only seven states have fully outlawed prison labor: Colorado, Vermont, Nebraska, Alabama, Utah, Nevada and Tennessee.
Lack of wage parity is only one of the occupational inequities California’s inmate firefighters face. Inmate firefighters are also far more likely to be injured on the job than civilian firefighters. Glaring occupational hazards for inmate firefighters are often the result of a galling lack of sufficient work equipment, especially personal protective equipment (PPE), that is key to protecting firefighters and ensuring minimal risk of injury. Further occupational hazards are contextualized by the fact that inmate fire crews are almost always hand crews, a special type of firefighting task force that uses hand tools to manually cut fire lines, remove potential fuel sources (i.e. dead wood), and remove debris. This type of work literally brings inmate firefighters face to face with occupational hazards such as smoke inhalation, burns, and lacerations. Echoing the findings of countless other studies, a report issued by Time Magazine in 2018 demonstrated disproportionately poor health outcomes for inmate firefighters compared to civilian firefighters, such as higher rates of occupational asthma, bronchitis, carbon monoxide poisoning, burns, and lacerations. The report also detailed how inmate firefighters are four times more likely to sustain object-induced injuries than civilian firefighters on the frontlines, and eight times more likely to be injured by smoke inhalation than their civilian counterparts. Inmates also face significant barriers to accessing healthcare compared to civilians, which can exacerbate existing injuries and health conditions.
It’s worth noting that while the number of civilian firefighters in LA County has been steadily increasing over the past decade, the number of inmate firefighters in LA County has been shrinking. This is in part thanks to successful state sentencing reform efforts, which have addressedthe high rates of mass incarceration CDCR is infamous for. In a desperate ploy to save money and revitalize the dwindling Fire Camp Program, CDCR has recently expanded its Youth Offender Program to include a two-year pilot program to train new inmate firefighters, and has incorporated broader eligibility requirements to allow higher-level offenders to participate in the Fire Camp Program. Despite these efforts, the inmate firefighter population in California has dwindled to below thirty percent and continues to decline. Considering recent surges in civilian recruitment for the LA County Fire Department and California municipal fire departments across the board, it would be far more prudent to focus on increasing recruitment and retention of fire personnel in civilian job sectors byexpanding social safety nets andcertification programs, and breaking down employment barriers to create the strongest coalition of firefighters possible. Inmates that previously served on CDCR fire crews have already received the necessary onboarding and training to serve as civilian firefighters. Allowing inmates to join civilian fire crews post-release would afford the state of California millions of dollars in cost savings as these individuals enter the workforce already equipped with the necessary certificates, training and work experience to be exemplary first responders. Inmates that served in the Fire Camp Program would make excellent candidates for the LA County Fire Department and similar fire crews, but currently, firefighting jobs aren't even typically available to inmates after release.
Despite pronounced occupational, health and wage inequities, many of California’s inmate firefighters take great pride in the critical and lifesaving work they do. Like all working Americans, they deserve decent pay and better workplace protections. Time and time again, inmate firefighters have echoed sentiments of wanting access to firefighting jobs post-release, better PPE, and wage parity with civilian firefighting crews. Two keynote organizations championing these causes for inmate firefighters are the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) and the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), both of whom advocate for better inmate working conditions behind bars and post-release. The IWOC also provides critical reporting on prison labor, exposing unjust treatment of inmates at correctional facilities. In response to the recent LA fires, the ARC has launched the ARC Firefighter Fund, which helps provide shower trucks, clothing, PPE and much needed Fire Camp upgrades for the inmate fire crews serving on the frontlines. While these organizations take a more broad stroke approach in their advocacy, a more personal success story comes in the form of Anthony Pedro, who served for three years at the California Correctional Center Fire Department. Despite his immense professional success on the inmate fire crew, Pedro had to fight tooth and nail for several years post-release to obtain his Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) license and become a professional Firefighter Engineer in the civilian job sector. To address the post-release employment disparities inmate firefighters face, Pedro founded the Future Fire Academy, a state-accredited institution that provides certifications, academy scholarships, mentorship, professional consulting and more to the formerly incarcerated and other disadvantaged communities.
Despite the failure of Proposition Six last November, some prison labor reform initiatives have made headway. In January of 2025, a bill was introduced in the California State Assembly (Assembly Bill 247) that if signed into law, would mandate a higher minimum wage for inmate firefighters by amending the state's penal code. The bill stipulates that the set minimum wage for inmate firefighters would be adjusted annually, and that inmate firefighters shall be paid an wage equal to that of the lowest paid civilian firefighters in the state. If passed, Assembly Bill 247 would also maintain the existing state credit program for inmates, where inmate firefighters can earn two days off their sentence for each full day served working on an inmate fire crew. Assembly Bill 247 would also complement a policy signed into law in 2020 by California Governor Gavin Newsom- the 2020 policy makes it easier for California’s inmate firefighters to get their records expunged post-release, with aims to break down barriers inmates face in gaining stable employment post-release.This policy has proved somewhat successful in mitigating post-release job disparities across the state. Many inmates have successfully petitioned the courts and had their criminal records expunged through the policy, improving their employment opportunities post-release. But many more have not..
While the CDCR claims the current inmate firefighter program promotes rehabilitation, a successful rehabilitation program would more closely resemble a post-release vocational program that creates pathways for recently released inmates to join fire crews across the state of California and beyond. This would help provide job security and reduce recidivism rates, leading to better post-release outcomes for inmates and the communities they live in. To be a model state for climate action, successfully tackle natural hazards, and create a more climate resilient tomorrow, the state of California needs a cohort of firefighters that receive equitable pay, resources and job security, where all participants can fight for a better future with the most support possible.
You can support the ongoing LA fire relief efforts by donating to organizations on this webpage curated by CharityNavigator.
Follow this link to learn more about the work of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC), click here to donate to and learn more about the ARC Firefighter Fund, and follow this link to learn more about the Future Fire Academy and Anthony Pedro’s story.
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