California should pardon inmates who risked their lives to fight recent wildfires | Opinion

President Donald Trump put his values into sweeping political action last month when he pardoned the January 6 rioters en masse. Now, California has an opportunity to demonstrate our values by granting clemency to the incarcerated firefighters who put their lives on the line to save neighborhoods and communities, and offering them sustainable, dignified jobs.

In the best instances, the executive power to dispense pardon is a way to declare that, in light of principles that rise above the letter of the law, a person has paid their debt to society. It serves this purpose in cases of wrongful conviction, sentencing that is too-punitive or when the state fails to secure rights guaranteed to incarcerated individuals.

Wildfires are both an emergency and a systemic fact of life in California. The same can be said of the state’s prisoner labor practices, which take advantage of a loophole in the 13th Amendment’s abolition of slavery to mobilize a massive workforce on behalf of interests both public and private.

Firefighting, with its extreme risk and stark benefit to the public good, is a glaring example of how California depends on prisoner labor and the exploitation of the people who perform it. This reality jeopardizes the state’s proclaimed values and implicates both the public and our elected representatives. Granting clemency would affirm our commitments to justice and human rights, and to a vision of dignity and fairness for all.

Whenever wildfires visit their devastation on California, we hear about the grossly underpaid heroism of incarcerated firefighters who put their lives on the line to protect California communities from destruction. This year has been no different. Alongside accounts of the truly remarkable mutual aid and community organizing efforts softening the blow of the Los Angeles fires have run more familiar stories about the lives and conditions faced by this portion of California’s wildfire responders who make up as much as 30% of the state’s total firefighting force at any given time.

For those who have been fighting to reform California’s criminal legal system, the cyclical surge in public awareness has felt especially bitter this year because our current reality could have easily been so different: Last November, California voters had the opportunity to amend the State Constitution and eliminate the practice of involuntary labor as punishment for a crime and allow incarcerated people to earn time credits for their voluntary participation in work assignments.

This practice exists due to a loophole purposefully created in the Thirteenth Amendment to maintain racial hierarchies and economic exploitation after the Civil War.

This opportunity came in the form of Proposition 6, which 53% of California voters rejected. If the proposition had passed, it would have improved the lots of those who battled the blazes to save homes, businesses and lives. Instead, at least for the foreseeable future, the Thirteenth Amendment’s legacy of slavery continues in our state’s prison labor system.

After witnessing thousands of incarcerated firefighters deployed to protect LA from inferno, our will has been galvanized to rectify this stain on our collective conscience. Myriad acts of community care and organization that mobilized in support of those impacted reaffirms our belief that we can succeed in this fight.

Without decisive action, this situation will play out again year after year. Wildfires are a fact of life in California and only continue to increase in intensity and destruction. Being prepared to respond to the next conflagration and the one after means having a sufficient pool of firefighters who can be mobilized in an emergency. In LA, firefighters from across the state, country and even Mexico were sent in to supplement local personnel. Local departments in the area even recalled retired firefighters into emergency service.

Yet, at the same time, thousands of people with the training and experience to meet the almost limitless demand for manpower are forced to sit it out because they have a felony on their record despite having fulfilled their “debts to society.” These same people were deemed fit to fight California’s wildfires for pennies while they were behind bars, but now, on reentry to society, find themselves ineligible to translate that experience and training into a sustainable livelihood.

There are several ways the state could address these issues — if lawmakers and their constituents found the political will to do so.

Barriers to post-release employment could be removed. Wages for incarcerated firefighters could be increased, and there’s currently a bill being championed by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan that would do just that. California could find many ways to raise its standards for working conditions of prison laborers. And we will regroup to give Californians another chance to end slavery.

None of these approaches, though, goes far enough to remove the moral stain we’ve already incurred, which undermines California’s position as a beacon of progress. That’s why we must actually rectify the situation and renew California’s claim to progressive governance by taking bold action and pardoning the firefighters who put their lives on the line to protect the public.

This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 5:00 AM.