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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

One common US prison job is seasonal firefighter, for forest fire season in California. The irony is that as soon as prisoners are released, being convicted felons, they can never work as firefighters. US prison labor is about money while incarcerated, never about life after release.

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>Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a bill allowing inmate firefighters to have their records expunged, clearing the path for them to be eligible for firefighting jobs upon release.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912193742/california-bill-cle...

There are a couple reasons not to treat the problem as solved:

First,

> Law enforcement groups and prosecutors opposed the bill saying the former inmates pose a danger to the public.

The culture that creates these restrictions is still there, it's still the predominant view from law enforcement and prosecutors that prison labor should be punitive, not rehabilitative. None of the people who created and supported that system are gone, and they still have an outsized degree of control over how that system works.

Second,

> The bill, sponsored by Democratic Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes, lets prisoners who received "valuable training and [placed] themselves in danger assisting firefighters to defend the life and property of Californians" to petition the courts to dismiss their convictions after completing their sentences.

A right to petition is not a guarantee that your petition will succeed.

Third,

When you dig into the details, the bill only allows removing the specific convictions that the prisoner was serving time for while they were a firefighter. If they had previous convictions or served time in the past, they'll still be restricted from getting EMT certification.

Fourth,

When you dig into the details, this bill actually doesn't get rid of restrictions on felons. It provides prisoners with a very narrow path to remove their felon status. That's not really the same thing as getting rid of the restrictions, and it's only available to prisoners who have "[placed] themselves in danger assisting firefighters".

Think of it this way: if it's illegal for women to vote, and instead of letting women vote I instead say, "here's a pathway to get the courts to declare you a man", then I haven't really gotten rid of the restriction on voting, and it would be inaccurate to say that my system provided women with the right to vote.

----

It's good that prisoners have at least some recourse that they can use to try and benefit from the life threatening work they did in prison, but it's a far cry from solving the overall problem, and it arguably doesn't even fully solve this specific problem.

Great analysis, thank you!

The vast majority of these programs are complete garbage. Yeah, it helps a few people, but they tend to come with tons of catches. Almost all crimes should be expungable, or it should be illegal to use the information for jobs/housing (may be trickier, which is why states are going with expungement). There's obvious exceptions, but there's no reason for someone to get denied a desk job, service job, trade/manual labor, due to getting caught with coke or DUIs... I don't care if they have five of them. Sometime within 1-10 years this information should not be used.

I'm currently going through the process of trying to get my own record expunged, the entire thing is a complete joke.

The amount of forms that need to be filled out is obscene. Determining which forms need to be filled out is a nightmarish exercise all to its own. Many of them need to be submitted in person. Email and online submission forms apparently don't exist. Each step has an absurdly short deadline for the the petitioner, and multiple month turnaround times for the state.

Then comes the fees. I had to pay out several thousand between attorney fees, application fees, filing fees.... Then come additional charges for each certified copy that you need, as you need to send one copy to any facility that would have any record for you. In my case, that came out to be 13 different facilities. Thankfully I've managed to get a decently paying job, but for most of those trying to get their life back in order, this is a complete non-starter.

I'm still in the process of trying to do this, and have been working on it for months now. It was made apparent to me that the process is designed extremely asymmetrically, and is just another form of exerting control.

Edit: This process will likely vary from state to state, but that's just what I've experienced.

Yeah, I don't want to say what state I'm in, but recent attempts to reform have been stymied by the fucking democrats. Politicians are utterly gutless to do anything remotely progressive (and the thing that was shut down was NOT very progressive)

I don't see why being a felon should keep you from fighting forest fires

In my area (Tampa, Florida) firefighter jobs are very desirable and there's a lot of competition for them. They're difficult to land. They're very stable, they give you enough free time that many firefighters have second professions/businesses, some days you don't have to work.

The role of firefighters has also expanded well beyond fighting fires - they also act as medical first responders, and it's required here that firefighters get EMT certified in their first two years on the job, or else they get fired.

So it's... kind of a position with a lot of public trust. I'm not saying I agree with this, but I imagine it would be very bad for a city's leadership if their firefighters went to someone's home for a medical issue and then robbed them.

Damn. Most firefighters here in Australia are volunteers around a kernel of professional. Something like 20,000 professionals to 150,000 volunteers.

Much of the US is volunteer too. It's mostly the big cities that have professionals.

This makes me wonder: Why aren't more firefighters getting paid?

How can our society accept people risking their lives for without trying to compensate them?

Because they have enough volunteers not to need to pay people.

Really we simply doing pay based on risks. It’s far more dangerous to be a long distance trucker than a police officer, but truckers don’t get respect, pensions, or high pay.

Well, a lot of rural departments are having trouble getting enough new volunteers to replace older ones.

I mean, just look at our type of jobs in IT. I can't just tell my employer that I'm leaving for a call. It seems it was the small community businesses that were the most understanding when you had to leave for that type of service.

Structure fires in modern buildings are actually kind of rare such that even in cities it wouldn’t be financially viable to keep a full staff of firefighters paid and equipped. This is (one) reason that fire crews are sent on medical calls. Yes - they might get there first which saves lives, but it also creates an additional justification to keep them paid. The majority of calls for city firefighters are medical, not fire related.

Barns tend to comprise a large percentage of structure fires. Also, it seems many newer apartment buildings have caught fire in recent times. The older buildings were pretty much concrete or block. They build the newer stuff kinda flimsy in my opinion.

Modern firefighting has little to do with fire. Trucks are far more likely to respond to traffic accidents or general medical emergencies than to structure fires.

This is accurate. I just followed up with a fire fighting friend. He said it’s about 70/30 medical to fire/other emergency.

The numbers shift from one area to another. I have family who are volunteers in a very small highway town. For them it is 80% road accidents and 10% old people falling. Better/closer ambulance support would mean fewer firefighters responding to slip-and-break-hip emergencies, but that is the reality of their local. In farm country it is more machinery-related accidents, things that probably don't happen much in a city.

I don't think GP's point was that firefighting should be a career open to felons, but rather that the fact that it's not, combines with the fact that prisoners are often doing firefighter work, means that clearly it's not about giving them an avenue for getting qualifications and get a job when they're released.

It's just an acknowledgment of the fact that the system has zero trust in itself. The prison is supposed to produce a functioning member of society. Instead, it can swallow a minor offender and spit out a dangerous criminal.

Compared to countries which instead practise rehabilitation, rather than outright "lock em up!" policies - recidivism rate is lower (e.g. Norway).

Although there's also the factor of better social safety nets as well, which will play a large part.

This is ignoring the not-so-historical use of prisons as a way to disenfranchise ones political rivals be they black, communist, socialist, antiwar, or whatever.

Not sure what you’re getting at here. An uncharitable reading would be that you’re implying that Normway keeps political dissidents prisoner, but I’m sure you wouldn’t mean to claim something so absurd.

I think that the implication is that this has happened in the US, which seems true to me.

Ys. The use of the courts and prisons as tools to quell dissent and maintain power for a minority prohibits efforts to reform prisons. To effect meaningful prison reform we must address the use of courts as weapons to silence political rivals. We should also be taking a hard look at selective enforcement, and lack of law enforcement action against criminal acts perpetrated by wealthy people. Steps like drug decriminalization, free career training/college programs for everyone, and quality rehabilitation are necessary to these ends but do nothing to right the generational injustices afflicted on the families caught up in the prison system.

The US prison system is not designed to reform anyone. Its goal is purely punitive.

The financial incentives are set up to produce as many dangerous criminals as possible. Without repeat offenders, many private prisons would have to close.

The solution is simple: The US should actually ban slavery and should also ban private prisons.

It should replace private prisons with ones that are rewarded when their former prisoners become productive members of society.

There should also be a cap on the ratio of prison spending to education, mental health, and community service programs.

For what it's worth, In my understanding the prisons themselves aren't necessarily private. At the federal level, most are not, but everything is run by for-profit contracting firms.

Private prisons incarcerate 8% of the total US prison population. I strongly suspect if they were banned, little would change for the average inmate.

The rest of the inmates are in prisons that are state-owned and thus inherently nonprofit, and the guards & other staff are either state or federal workers. Contractors do things like provide commissary goods or run the inmate telephone system, but the guard in the tower at your local prison is a state employee.

Hey, so IMO private prisons are a distraction and tiny part of the problem. The prison industrial complex is more substantial (but still just a piece). It's not just the prisons, but the contractors and LEO/justice personnel involved in putting bodies into the system and making sure as many lives are ruined as possible.

Because its a risky job with a high esprit-de-corp. Similar to allowing criminals to be soldiers, think of the damage it does to the esteem of folks already in that position to be told "you are in the same class as these dregs".

Why would your morale drop if you would work with someone who spent some time in prison 5 or 10 years ago? I don't see why it should.

And why are they "dregs"? The entire attitude towards crime and punishment in the US is seriously FUBAR IMHO; people seem to think everyone who spent any time in prison as some psychopath ready to loot, plunder, rape, and murder at the drop of a hat. In reality, it's not like that at all. People are regularly shackled during trails like they're some Hannibal Lector with superpowers. Police will chase people even for fairly minor offences putting everyone's life at risk, as if they're chasing Ted Bundy. AFAIK it's the only country that routinely does drug tests on employees as if every drug user is a rabid maniac and a danger to the company.

The US puts more people in prison than China. Before the internment camps in Xinjang really took off it was more even in absolute numbers, and now even with the internment it's still significantly higher per capita. If you're locking up more people than a country which literally locks up people based purely on their ethnicity then you're doing something wrong. Very wrong.

People have been talking about the police a lot in the last year. But that's not really the core problem, it's just a consequence of the toxic and dehumanizing attitude much of the country seems to have.

The best salesperson I've ever worked with was a convicted felon. That "dreg" could outsell every single person at the company. The damage he did to my self-esteem was that I sucked at sales and needed to do better. Thankfully, he outclassed me as a salesperson and gave me insight of what it takes to close a deal.

Hey its not my attitude that matters. Its the attitude of the corp being told they are not much different than ex-cons.

I'd think HN folk would think one step past ad hominem responses before posting.

It depends what felony...

I don't think felons should be able to be denied housing and 70-90% of jobs out there either.

This is the bigger problem. We have a culture of no second chances in the USA, that seems to be getting worse, if anything.

The way the system and companies (liability mostly) work, felons have a very hard time getting any sort of job.

This is no longer true:

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912193742/california-bill-cle...

Okay, it's not true... now.... but it's super fucked up that it was still true literally less than a year ago. So as an indicator that our systems incentives are completely messed up. It's still valid. The system hasn't changed in a year... just our need for firefighters.

It's still true. "Allowing ex-inmates to petition courts to expunge their records so they can get jobs as firefighters" is not the same as "allowing ex-inmates to get jobs as firefighters".

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