Using Prisoners As Unpaid Firefighter Squads

By on November 17, 2011 in News 19

Cities and towns from coast to coast are straining under the weight of budget shortfalls, so what are they to do? Lay off essential public employees and replace them with slave labor by prisoners — it’s what Camden County, Georgia is doing in regards to firefighters. Will the next step be unpaid prisoners teaching your kids?

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  • fruits

    and mysteriously arrests go up…

  • Hillbilly

    Next I want them to replace the cops….. But no seriously give this one a chance. This is what we talk about when we bitch that we focus on punishment instead of rehab. Imagine someone who was a firefighter in prison who saved lives.. for most people that will be life altering. Not all criminals are sociopaths… this will help good people grow out of bad ones.

  • CosmicAmazing

    No wonder why marijuana is made illegal, they need a reason to have more slaves. 

  • Rufus

    Uh, this isn’t news. My cousin was arrested for possession (drugs, not demonic) when he was 17 and was sent to juvenile hall for 8 months then when he turned 18 they transferred him to “Fire Camp” where he was basically an unpaid firefighter. He dug trenches, and helped with the fires that always come up in CA every year.

    This was 14 years ago. 

  • lickety split

    I liked this attitude I hope its right. But they should get paid a least a bit, some have families on the outside. 

  • Corporate_felon

    I can see how this might change someone’s perspective on life by saving lives but my thing is that this is really slave labor like they were saying which is totally fucked up.  They are not doing this (government and private corp) to “rehabilitate” people but to save money, well shall I say, not spend any money or pay a wage that is lower than what someone makes in China.  If they are non violent offenders, chances are they do not need to even be in prison/jail in the first place because they are in there for something stupid like selling weed, DUI, or getting a traffic violation (yes, I did say traffic violation and I do know people that are in jail for that).  Everyday I wonder what this damn country will look like in just 5 years.  I bet we will have concentration camps full of non violent offenders or people who did nothing and got framed by the police doing every job under the sun and not getting paid for it.  I bet it would just be cheaper to not keep them in prison because it costs about $50k to the taxpayer per person per year to house them, feed them, and give them medical care. So ridiculous!

  • Corporate_felon

    Also, they don’t want your mind to be freed from the oppression that we live in everyday and to be free from the antidepressant zombie slave stupor that most people I know live in.  All I have to say is to never ever ride with someone in a car that is taking antidepressants or have them do anything for you for that matter that involves having a mind.  Weed does not make people drive as stupid as BigPharma does!

  • CosmicAmazing

    I totally agree with you.

  • CosmicAmazing

    I totally agree with you.

  • Grohanthizar

    If you end up with prisoners teaching kids over there I can see a dramatic rise in school shankings.

  • Godozo

    If people would read the thirteenth amendment, this wouldn’t surprise anyone:

    Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
    punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,
    shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their
    jurisdiction.Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

    Note that the government reserves the right to enslave people (as punishment, of course, supposedly with a time limit).

    (and as a final note, I thought it was a blanket ban on slavery before I read this, so I was surprised when I came across the actual text)

  • Dunzain

    Sounds like a new plot for South Park. Stone and Parker well never run out of ideas for shows, they don’t even have to be creative, just read the news.

  • Dunzain

    Addendum to last post: This is must be a joke, eh? :)

  • Anarchy Pony

    The Onion gets closer to being real news every passing hour.

  • Elmyr23

    this is conspiracy, this is the free market. this is why capitalism is bad. In the end the cheapist labour for the most profit is best.

  • Elmyr23

    you can try to make top earners into desiring gods, but that will only be due to the fact that u have not ascertained thier hieghts.

  • Anonymous

    How about when people start dying because an untrained person goes out to pretend to fight fires. Fireman must know and understand fires how they work and the risk involved. They must understand fire fighting equipment. The must have knowledge and understanding of fire fighting infrastructure in buildings, including alarms and sprinkler systems. The must be trained as field medics to be able to save people until an ambulance arrives.
    Slave labour is slave labour, you never ever fire honest hard working citizens to give their job to criminals. That is a corrupt shit heel idea, time to break up corporations before they enslave your children and grandchildren. How long before it is three strikes and your out for being arrested at a protest, life in prison as a slave.

  • heavyjunk

    This story is ridiculous.  I did fourteen years in prison and for the last four years of my sentence I was a wild land forest fighter.  We prisoners were better at fighting fires then the State’s dept. of natural resource crews.  We fought fires, that the college students who were working fires seasonally, that were more dangerous and we did a far better job.  I serious doubt that the inmates will be the principles fighting the fires, but rather they will so the menial work that makes real fir fighters jobs a burden which then leaves them available to perform their real task of saving life.  Without prisoners wildland fires would be more expensive to fight and they would be more devastating due to lack of available firefighters.  If you want to know the real crooks, look at how much it takes to extinguish an average forest fire and notice how much the private hand crews make…they are fleecing the states and the USFS.  So its not the inmates faults, and if anything they are making us better people and giving us a way to give back to the community.  With the skills I learned while fighting fires I was able to find a job upon my release in forestry which pays me enough to live and go back to school.  The Young Turks are stupid, unrealistic and haters; they are just looking for something to complain about for their show. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/icallitablanket Desiree Hohenstaufen

    When people are in prison fire camp is the most wanted place to go. For one thing you get to be outside more, and a lot of people have guilt and they can feel like they are doing something good. Fire camp is disney land compared to regular prison, or so many people I know have said. And the ones that did fire camp learned a lot and most of them did not return to prison. California has this program.