Prisoners Who Fight Wildfires in California: An Insider’s Look

[procon]

13. Its absolutely exploitive.

Compare what is essentially $80 million worth of free prison labor to $80 million of revenue that is lost and taken out of our economy. That's $80 million worth of good paying jobs that could be supporting thousands of workers who would be paying their taxes and spending their paychecks to bolster local communities.

California prisons are overflowing because of outdated sentencing rules. There's a terrible conflict of interest between the legislature's unwillingness to address overdue judicial and prison reforms and keeping people incarcerated just so the state can use them as a cheap labor pool to avoid paying for new workers. It might be semantics to label that as a profit, but there's no denying that the state enjoys a huge financial benefit.