Labor, slave? indentured? coerced?

[xoxoxoBruce]

You've probably seen some reference to the "Bully" Fire that's been tearing up northern California. I was surprised to learn of the 2,000 firefighters battling that blaze, 900 are prisoners of the CA Department of Corrections making $2 a day.

They are part of a group of 4,000 "low level offenders" who volunteer for this duty rather than stay in a cell.

There are guards at the base camp, but you won’t see guns, truncheons or barbed wire. On-site warehouses and large white makeshift tents, cooled with fans and air conditioners, are sleeping quarters. There’s a medical tent used by both professional firefighters and inmates. Most here are being treated for poison oak.
Then there’s the food: it’s hearty, to keep the inmates fueled for the rough work. Base camps and fire camps like these are where the inmates will do nearly all of their time. When they aren’t fighting fires they do community work, like building a flood barrier or setting up a park for an ice cream social. Once they’re in the program they never spend a night in a prison facility.

That sounds like a fair deal for the inmates, however look at the flip side. The state is getting a lot of dirty, difficult, dangerous work for cheap, which like a good deal for tax payers. But many of these "low level offenders" are locked up on bullshit charges in the first place, couple of joints, fight in a bar, pissing off a cop.

The program is called, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Conservation Camp program. It sounds like a good deal for the state and prisoners, but what happens in the unlikely case of the labor supply slowing down. The state still wants cheap labor, so they would have to use higher risk prisoners... or would they.

The state still has the option of locking up people on bullshit charges, even trumped up charges, plus there's a growing debtors prison movement across the country.

But this kind of abuse, coerced labor, surely couldn't happen in the land of the free and home of the brave. Anyway, it only happens to poor people, or colored people, or immigrants, or...

[Clodfobble]

It may not be a perfect program, but it certainly sounds better than the current alternative.

[BigV]

If it's really the case that inmates volunteer for the duty, then I don't think it's coerced, not the firefighting labor, flood barrier labor, etc.

Our judicial system certainly has the bad attributes you list. But if prison labor is volunteered for, it's not coerced.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by BigV

If it's really the case that inmates volunteer for the duty, then I don't think it's coerced, not the firefighting labor, flood barrier labor, etc.

Our judicial system certainly has the bad attributes you list. But if prison labor is volunteered for, it's not coerced.

I feel the ones that are jailed on bullshit charges, then given a no-brainer option to not be where they shouldn't be in the first place, are coerced.

[BigV]

Are you saying they can't refuse? That their consent is false?


jailed on bullshit charges is one thing; working on a chain gang is another; volunteering to fight fires or stamp license plates or whatever is another. Perhaps it's really the case that they have no choice--that's coercion. I don't know enough to assess whether or not they're able to consent/refuse.

[xoxoxoBruce]

If they force people against their will, into a position where there's no other logical choice, that's coercion in my book.

[sexobon]

Seems that it's not unlike people volunteering for military service because there aren't enough private sector jobs in their area and they can't afford to relocate. The bad economy may not be their fault; but, they're not being drafted so it's not compulsory, just their bad luck.

[orthodoc]

Possibly the choice isn't that different for people volunteering for military service due to not enough jobs/not enough education/inability to relocate, vs people who are in prison for something - no judgment re what - but no ability to relocate.

Millions of us take on jobs above our abilities, against our will, and hope for the best. Sometimes it's the best learning crucible.

How much choice does any one of us have? Don't we, mostly, respond to what life throws at us?

[sexobon]

xoB,

It's not like they're the Dirty Dozen (x 333) sitting on death row being offered a probable suicide mission to earn a pardon from execution. For "low level offenders" you'd have to demonstrate greater consequences to not volunteering than remaining in their cells before I'd consider it coercion rather than just redirection. That you don't think they should be locked up in the first place and tying that to a postulated potential for abuse of the system is a red herring.

[xoxoxoBruce]

What, you don't think being unjustly yanked off the street and stuck in a cell for a few years would be a horrific enough prospect to make someone volunteer for any alternative? Considering some of the things people I've known have done to avoid that cell, I disagree.

And you promised not to tell about the coloration of my herring.

[orthodoc]

xoB, you're talking about people having or not having the choice to fight a wildfire/risk their lives, right?

People who are otherwise sitting in a cell for one (arguably bad) reason or another.

As someone who has been in an intolerable situation for one (bad) reason or another, I'd always welcome the chance to strike out and do something meaningful for my own sake. I can't speak for everyone in CA prisons, obviously; just offering some thoughts from a similar perspective.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I don't think they are taking that much risk, the pros do that. These people do the follow up, knocking down hot spots and such. It's 24 hour shifts of hard nasty work, and there's always some danger in the woods. But to most people it's way better than being in a cage for years, those people really don't have the choice the state claims to be giving them.

[DanaC]

It may be a choice - but it's a Hobson's choice. Particularly when you consider what prison actually means (see prison thread and the stuff about endemic levels of rape in prisons). And particularly when you consider the private and therefore profit making nature of much of the prison system (remember a few years ago the scandal about young offenders being imprisoned for not very much as a way to boost the profits of the company involved? Someone help me there, i can't recall the details). Add in too, the arbitrary high fines imposed on people who cannot afford either the fine, or a lawyer to fight the fine and then end up in prison...

If there are financial incentives to locking people up - and once locked up they are available as a pool of cheap labour for the state in which they are imprisoned, then the system is dangerously skewed towards exploitation.

They should pay these people a proper wage - held in lieu until their sentence is complete perhaps - but a wage that matches what they would be paid if they were not incarcerated. Alternatively - the state could offer this job, at minimum wage to unemployed jobseekers.

Not only are they exploiting the prisoners (some of whom may genuinely want to do this - so it ain't black and white really) but they are denying proper paid work to the unemployed.

[Pico and ME]

Originally Posted by DanaC

If there are financial incentives to locking people up - and once locked up they are available as a pool of cheap labour for the state in which they are imprisoned, then the system is dangerously skewed towards exploitation.


They should pay these people a proper wage - held in lieu until their sentence is complete perhaps - but a wage that matches what they would be paid if they were not incarcerated. Alternatively - the state could offer this job, at minimum wage to unemployed jobseekers.

Not only are they exploiting the prisoners (some of whom may genuinely want to do this - so it ain't black and white really) but they are denying proper paid work to the unemployed.

No ifs about it, prisons have become a big business. And the degree of corruption and exploitation in our judicial system has increased right along with it.

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by DanaC

... If there are financial incentives to locking people up - and once locked up they are available as a pool of cheap labour for the state in which they are imprisoned, then the system is dangerously skewed towards exploitation.

They should pay these people a proper wage - held in lieu until their sentence is complete perhaps - but a wage that matches what they would be paid if they were not incarcerated. ...

[Bold Mine]

The State pays for their incarceration and the taxpayers fund the State. If neither is permitted to recoup some of that loss through services rendered, services that the State would have to pay others to do with taxpayers funding, then the State and taxpayers should be able to deduct from prisoners' wages the full cost of their incarceration.

If the taxpayers have to pay for the prisoners' room, board, medical expenses ... etc. AND pay them competitive wages for labor on top of it --- well, then crime pays doesn't it?