The Persistence of Racial Discrimination Through the Prison Industrial Complex

THE PEACE ADVOCATE JANUARY 2025

Forest Service, USDA via Flickr

By Grace Cowell

As wildfires rage across Southern California, it’s time to give a closer look into the history and roots of systemic racism surrounding a key group on the front lines fighting what have become the most destructive blazes in Los Angeles history: incarcerated laborers. 

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has deployed nearly 1,000 incarcerated firefighters since the start of these fires, a practice that has been utilized through the state’s Conservation Camp Programs (fire camps) since 1915, at times accounting for 30% of the state’s firefighting force. 

These camps are entirely voluntary, with many incarcerated Californians drawn to the rewarding nature of the work and the opportunity to be viewed as heroic, breaking traditional narratives. Participants are also incentivised through “time credits,” allowing two days to be removed from their sentence for every one day they serve on the force. Following release, though not an easy process, fire camp participants can pursue careers as firefighters. 

While these seem to be positive outcomes, let us not overlook that these individuals are only paid up to $0.74 per hour or a maximum $10.24 per day – wages considered high paying by prison labor standards – for their exhaustive and life threatening efforts to starve fires. The exploitative nature of this labor force and how some essentially risk their lives for a shorter sentence, raises questions surrounding the ethics of the multi-billion dollar industry that is prison labor.

This most recent use of incarcerated firefighters follows the California voter’s rejection of Proposition 6 during the 2024 election. The ballot question proposed an amendment to the state constitution that would have removed a “current provision that allows jails and prisons to impose involuntary servitude to punish crime.” 

California, as with most states, models the US Constitution’s 13th Amendment exception to the abolition of slavery that allows forced labor “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” stripping an individual of their right to refuse work upon their incarceration. The ratification of this amendment in 1865 provided a loophole to traditional slavery, allowing the passage of discriminatory laws that led to mass arrests of Black individuals for petty crimes and harsh sentences oftentimes centered around manual labor. 

These discrepancies continue today, 160 years later, as 38.9% of the incarcerated population is Black, despite Black Americans accounting for only 13.7% of the nation’s total population, an incarceration rate five times higher than that of white individuals. The persistence of the slavery clause in the majority of states, and the disproportionate incarceration rates amongst Black Americans has allowed a legalized form of slavery and exploitation to persist in the US and infiltrate many facets of consumerism, namely the food industry.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary, the country’s largest maximum security prison, was once a slave plantation. Today, many men residing at the prison have been sentenced to hard labor, forced to harvest crops and raise livestock for just pennies per hour or nothing at all. The prison’s products are then sold to private companies, entering the supply chains that lead to fast food restaurants and grocery store shelves. 

A 2022 report by the ACLU found that, despite generating $2 billion in goods, $9 billion worth of prison maintenance, and aiding in emergency situations, 70% of incarcerated laborers cannot afford basic necessities with their wages and are oftentimes stripped of workplace protections and safety protocols. 

Families are forced to cover commissary and costs to maintain contact, sending 34% into debt for strictly phone calls and visits. The overall average debt hovers around $13,607, a hardship that hits communities of color the hardest, provided their disproportionate vulnerability to the criminal legal system and mass incarceration, as well as a higher likelihood of economic insecurity. Around 80% of incarcerated individuals come from low-income communities, so with a current racial wealth gap sitting at $240,120 and Black Americans experiencing poverty at rates ten times higher than their white counterparts, Black communities are far more likely to be impacted by the financial burden of imprisonment. 

The primary argument for prison labor is that it prepares incarcerated individuals for the workforce upon their release. While this may be true in some cases, such as those in the California fire camps who choose to pursue firefighting following their sentence, in many instances, formerly incarcerated individuals reported that they are not taught transferable skills, leading them to dead-end jobs in the outside world. 

This proves to be a major issue when incarcerated individuals face an unemployment rate that is 27% higher than the national average contributing to the statistic that half of all individuals released will recidivate at some point. Economic hardships can lead people to commit crimes once again to support themselves, trapping them in the cycle of mass incarceration, a phenomenon sparked by the War on Drugs in the 1980s that explicitly targeted predominantly Black and low-income communities. 

These communities continue to be hit hardest by the economic struggles associated with incarceration, which can be seen as formerly incarcerated white men have an unemployment rate of 18.4%, whereas the unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated Black women is 43.6%. Employment is vital for the formerly incarcerated. With prison labor wages being as low as they are, they clearly need a job post prison just to meet their basic needs. 

With proper professional development and educational opportunities while in prison, not just forced labor, formerly incarcerated individuals can be presented with the proper chance to flourish upon their release, freeing them from the threshold of recidivism and allowing them to reach beyond the bare necessities. It is time for the criminal legal system and Americans to recognize the persistence of the legacy of slavery through prison labor and how it infiltrates products used in their daily lives. Vulnerable individuals and communities deserve to thrive, far from the cycle of targeted and discrepant incarceration that has continued since the 13th Amendment, not exploited for cheap labor and capitalistic gain.

Grace Cowell is a legislative intern at Massachusetts Peace Action and a pre-law student at Northeastern University