Supervisors OK New Agreement for Use of Inmate Labor to Fight Fires

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By City News Service

Under a revised agreement with the state that the Board of Supervisors approved Tuesday, the cost of deploying Riverside County jail inmates to fight wildfires will be a lot less.

In a 5-0 vote, the board signed off on an amended compact with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to reimburse the agency at the rate of $10 per day for putting county prisoners to work on the fire lines, or for brush clearance operations.

Under a previous agreement, the per diem reimbursement rate was $46.19 per inmate per day.

While the daily use rate was slashed, the training rate nearly doubled from $46.19 to $81, according to CDCR documents. The agency said it takes an average 38 days to train inmates on hand crew firefighting procedures and techniques.

The county began contracting with the state for deployment of inmates to state-run fire camps in 2013, at the urging of Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, a former firefighter, who cited the manpower benefits as well as the opportunity to free up local jail space.

Undersheriff Bill DiYorio expressed hope that the reduced daily use rate might enable the sheriff’s department to assign a higher number of jail inmates to one of the two CDCR fire camps in the county, but he acknowledged that not every inmate who applies qualifies.

“It’s an issue,” he told the board. “They have to be in good health and be ready to perform rigorous tasks.”

Fire Chief John Hawkins noted further that only a limited number of offenders can be accepted into the program, and with recent changes in state law reclassifying criminals as misdemeanants when they would have otherwise served jail time for felonious offenses, the crop of prospects continues to thin.

“Here in the county, we were at a high of 53, but now we’re down below 40 who are participating,” Hawkins told the board. “There are fewer inmates who qualify for fire duty.”

He added that “arson convicts” cannot take part, eliciting a chorus of laughs in the board chamber.

Supervisor John Benoit lauded the inmate-firefighter program as a way to get “productive use out of the prisoner population.”

“It also gives them an opportunity to shorten their time behind bars and provide a service to the community,” the former California Highway Patrol officer said.

The CDCR has a total 200 inmate-firefighter spots available in the county. If all positions were filled in the next fiscal year, the total cost would run $2.27 million.