As wildfires rage through Los Angeles, forcing hundreds of thousands to evacuate as their neighborhoods go up in flames, incarcerated firefighters have rushed in to help stop the spread. Historically, incarcerated people make up around 30 percent of California’s wildfire crews. More than 900 of them are currently battling fires in Los Angeles. On Saturday evening, Kim Kardashian — lawyer-in-training, occasional criminal-justice reform advocate — took to her Instagram Story to call for higher pay for these crews. “This pay has been the same since 1984,” Kardashian wrote, tagging Governor Gavin Newsom. “It has never been raised with inflation. It’s never been raised when the fires got worse and many died.”
As the New York Times reports, incarcerated firefighters are paid a maximum of $10.24 a day with an additional $1 for every hour they spend fighting emergencies — so less than California’s minimum wage of $16.50 per hour. Prisoners can earn reduced sentences for their service with two days removed for every day spent in fire crew. And thanks to advocacy from reform groups like the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, which Kardashian mentioned directly in her Instagram Story, it’s now easier for prisoners to get their records expunged. But the controversial practice is still exploitative, positioning mass incarceration as a solution to climate disaster and firefighter shortages. (Last November, California voters rejected a ballot measure that would ban forced prison labor.) Governor Newsom, you may want to check your DMs.