General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: 30 Percent of California's Forest Firefighters Are Prisoners [View all]nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)yes, CAL FIRE saves money, in relative terms. Corrections is still paying the same money to house them that they would at prison. Or rather they are paying more since food expenditure does go up, and the guard or two assigned to the camp has to be given special pay. Then there is the cost of transportation.
Where the state saves money... is in the much lower recidivism rate among the volunteers and the fact that some of them go on to JOIN the fire service and come into the job with their eyes wide open.
This was the objective of the program in the 1950s and is not part of the prison industrial complex. There are many reasons to be critical of mass incarceration... but in some ways this program is a remnant of another era when we did try to make sure people went to prison ONCE in their lifetimes and not over and over and over again.