Gestapo Watch - G4S - UK police being privatised

[Husq]

Private companies could take responsibility for investigating crimes, patrolling neighbourhoods and even detaining suspects under a radical privatisation plan being put forward by two of the largest police forces in the country.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/02/police-privatisation-security -firms-crime?commentpage=all#start-of-comments

[Disco_Destroyer]

It really is Terry Gilliam's Brazil One corporation for everything no wonder they wont release the full Directors Cut here

[Mark Gobell]

[Mark Gobell]

[Mark Gobell]

[Mark Gobell]

[Mark Gobell]

Related:

[Mark Gobell]

To: Surrey Police Authority

Date: 13th October 2011

By: Mark Rowley, Chief Constable

Title: Outline Business Case for Business Partnering in Surrey Police
______________________________________________________________

Purpose of Report/Issue:

The purpose of this document is to provide the outline business case for commencing a procurement exercise to explore the feasibility of partnering with a private sector organisation to improve service delivery and make savings in non-frontline areas of the organisation.

*

Yeah right ho.



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[TonyGosling]

this happened to us here in Avon & Somerset police several years ago with the wife of the chief constable Colin Port, Susan Barnes, project managing the change and pocketing a six figure sum from doing it!
Freemasons often use their wives as 'cut-outs' in corrupt deals like this and Sue is perfect because she has kept her maiden name. In the initial stages hardly anyone scrutinising the deal knew she was his wife. Until the deal was done of course.
But at least that was just 'civilian support services'


SouthWest One is a Joint Venture company set up in 2007 by Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane Council and now including Avon and Somerset Police. I have nothing against joint ventures in principle, but this one was born in a most peculiar manner and offers 75%+ to IBM. It was and remains a huge and risky venture for public sector partners. It could cost taxpayers £400 million. I always believed there had been excessive secrecy about the negotiations to form it, justifyable suspicion about the roles of several leading players and a totally unrealistic business plan. Since the County Council elections in June 2009 a change of administration at County Hall has seen the departure of the Chief Executive, Alan Jones, and a review of the SouthWest One. I am now more relaxed abut the ability of the politicians to keep tabs on an IBM-dominated company.
http://www.liddellgrainger.org.uk/somersetwest/SOUTHWESTONE.html

[Mark Gobell]

[Mark Gobell]

On a related theme, a pre-coalition article on private prisons.

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Campaign Against Prison Slavery (CAPS)

Bra Bros - Prison Privatisation: Alive and Kicking


On the 27th April the Ministry of Justice announced the abandoning of their £2.9 billion plan for three Titan jails, each holding 2,500 prisoners. These massive prisoner-warehouses, designed as a quick fix for the ever-expanding prison population of England and Wales, were supposed to be built and run by the public sector. However, rejection of the plans by just about everyone in anyway involved in prison issues, coupled with the current global financial crisis, has seen the Titan plan replaced by one involving a massive extension of prison privatisation and ‘market testing’ within the criminal justice arena.[1]

The new plan calls for five new jails, each holding 1,500 prisoners, to be built at a cost of £3.1 billion. The first 2 of these mini-Titans will be at the former Ford Motor Company site in Barking and on the former psychiatric hospital site at Runwell, near Colchester. Both will be designed, built and run by private security companies on 25-year contracts and open by 2013. The mini-Titans are in addition to previously announced plans for nearly 5,000 additional places by 2011, including 2 private sector 600-place prisons at Belmarsh West & Maghull, Liverpool.

Additionally, the market testing of 7 existing prisons was announced: 2 of these are the ‘failing prisons’ at Birmingham (better known as Winston Green)[2] and Wellingborough; the others had previously been open to competition and would again be at the end of their current contracts[3]. If the whole programme were followed through on it would result in the UK having the largest private prison population by percentage in the world.

At the same time, and almost completely unnoticed, the government announced the extension of its bizarre ‘privatisation by stealth’ project, previously piloted in 2008, of allowing Probation Boards to gain Trust status in the same way that Academy schools and NHS hospitals previously have. Those Boards that then failed to cut the mustard and gain Trust status would face the possibility of full privatisation. Not to be outdone, the Tories plan to take the Trust status one step further and extend it to the prisons themselves, but more of that later.

ORIGINS

[Mark Gobell]

Police Oracle Forum

PRIVATISATION OF THE POLICE SERVICE

Started by oldcopper, Mar 02 2012 11:46 PM

Some interesting comments from the boys and girls in blue ...



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[Mark Gobell]

The gradual digging up of the playing field to make it "more level" for future, cheaper private games ...

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Thousands of 999 police axed as spending cuts hit frontline numbers

Figures reveal emergency staff have been hit despite pledge by David Cameron to defend them from spending cuts

Toby Helm and Mark Townsend
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 10 March 2012 21.31 GMT
Article history


The number of police dealing with 999 emergencies has fallen by more than 5,000 since the last general election, according to new figures that seriously undermine David Cameron's pledge to be defending "frontline" forces from spending cuts.

The figures, compiled from responses to freedom of information requests from all 43 forces in England and Wales, are a severe embarrassment to the government, which has insisted that its 20% funding cuts will not compromise public safety or the fight against crime.

Labour described the job losses among so-called "first responders" – those following up on 999 calls – as "shocking" and said they raised new questions about whether the public could trust the government.

Only last month Cameron told the Commons that the percentage of frontline officers was actually increasing. Ministers have claimed more officers are being switched to the "sharp end" as back office jobs go and police bureaucracy is reduced. But the new data, supplied by the forces themselves and verified independently by the House of Commons library, shows a fall of 5,261 in the number of officers defined as "first responders" between March 2010 and December last year.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary defines "first responders" as those responding to 999 calls, attending traffic accidents and being first at the scenes of crime and other incidents such as public disturbances.

Of the 43 forces, 23 have so far only submitted figures up to March last year in their FOI responses, meaning that, when all the figures are in, the total is likely to be significantly higher.

Among forces that have suffered the biggest culls of 999 officers are Devon and Cornwall, which lost 540 "first responders" (25% of its total), and West Midlands, which lost 1,023 (19%).

Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation, which represents 135,000 officers, said the impact of the cuts would raise questions about the police's ability to contain events such as last summer's riots. "It puts more pressure on those who are left. In particular, those involved in responding are stretched and it puts their safety on the line," he said.

"It also impinges on the public's safety. We keep getting the same mantra from government, that it wants to concentrate on crime, that it's a core responsibility, and that's sending one message to the public. The message is that they expect us to do everything, which cannot be right. We have to acknowledge that, with cuts of between 20% and 32%, we cannot do more with that much less."

Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary, whose office made the freedom of information requests, said: "Time and again the government has promised us the frontline will not be cut but now we see very clear proof that the very officers that need to respond to 999 calls, that need to respond to emergency incidents, are disappearing. To lose thousands of the very officers that you need in an emergency will be deeply worrying for people right across the country. People need to know that the police will be there when they need them."

A Home Office spokesman said: "These are not official figures and we don't recognise them. The reality is independent reports have shown police can reduce costs while protecting the frontline and, according to official statistics and police plans, the proportion of officers on the frontline is rising.

"We've reversed the policies of the past to get police out of back-office roles and back on the streets. Official figures show that since March 2010 we've seen 500 more officers on the frontline as work is done across all 43 forces to reduce the more than 23,500 warranted police officers in backroom posts."

The FOI submissions are certain to catapult the issue of policing and crime to the top of the political agenda, after the latest British Crime Survey figures showed personal crime – including theft, robbery and violence – had gone up by 11% since last year, the steepest rise for more than a decade. The home affairs select committee raised concerns last year about the effects that £2bn of cuts a year would have on the service and on crime levels. The committee also raised concerns that the biggest savings were to be made in 2012-3 – when police authorities would be replaced with police and crime commissioners, and when there would be additional pressure on forces nationwide due to the 2012 Olympics.

Last year the police minister, Nick Herbert, said: "We believe that by controlling costs, cutting bureaucracy, making savings in force back and middle offices, and improving productivity, the police service for the public can be maintained and improved even as funding is reduced."

Other ministers have repeatedly said that crime and police effectiveness "do not depend on numbers".

Cooper said that policing could well become as big a political crisis for the government in the runup to the next election as the NHS. Like the NHS, the government was about to impose massive and unwelcome reform on a service that the public believed had improved, even at a time of massive spending cuts.


.

[TonyGosling]

And, I see, balloting to change police federation rules so they can go on strike.

[TonyGosling]

Security firm in Olympics fiasco spies on the sick in their homes: G4S targets insurance claimants
G4S staff watch injury claimants to ensure they are not faking condition
Delivery men knock on front doors with secret cameras to film claimants
Liberty group accuses G4S of 'oppressive and disproportionate' behaviour
By James Slack and Neil Sears - PUBLISHED: 23:57, 16 September 2012 | UPDATED: 00:02, 17 September 2012
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2204273/Security-firm-Olympics -fiasco-spies-sick-homes-G4S-targets-insurance-claimants.html
Controversial security firm G4S is using undercover surveillance teams disguised as delivery men to spy on the sick or disabled in their homes.
The company holds lucrative contracts to carry out investigative work for insurance companies.
Papers seen by the Daily Mail reveal how staff are employed to watch covertly those who have lodged claims for the likes of critical injury cover to check they are not faking the extent of their condition.
But the documents also reveal how it is ‘usual practice’ to send agents dressed as delivery men to knock on a claimant’s front door while wearing secret cameras.
They claim to have a parcel or other such item – which the person did not request – so they can film them at the door.
G4S, which was widely condemned for its catastrophic failure to supply enough security guards for the Olympics, said the tactic is known as the ‘parcel pretext’.
It is now facing legal action from a disabled woman whose home was entered by one of its staff claiming to be delivering a clothing catalogue.
The case has been taken up by civil rights group Liberty, which accused G4S of ‘oppressive and completely disproportionate’ behaviour.
Mother-of-two Tanya Joiner only discovered what had happened to her when she used data protection laws to ask for the information held on her file.
Mrs Joiner, 38, suffers from various debilitating medical conditions, including arthritis and fibromyalgia – a long-term condition that causes pain all over the body. Her disability prevents her from working and in early 2011 she made a claim on her Zurich critical injury insurance policy.
Zurich, which disputes the extent of her disability, responded by engaging covert surveillance experts the Cotswold Group – now a division of G4S – to investigate her circumstances.
Mrs Joiner, who lives on Canvey Island, Essex, with husband Paul, 43, and daughters Jamie, 17, and Hannah-Lee, 11, said: ‘Zurich had already sent out a medical examiner, which I knew – but I have since discovered that while he was doing my report, the surveillance started in November 2011.
‘When I applied under the Data Protection Act to see what they had got, I found they had videoed my mother-in-law taking me to the supermarket. There’s hardly any footage of me in it.
‘But then I saw that during several days of surveillance outside, they had also come into my house – and had a picture of me on my sofa.
‘I could barely remember it, but they had knocked on my door with a parcel for me and wanted me to sign for it. My husband told them I couldn’t move, and said they would have to come in. They came into the living room, I signed it, and they left.
‘It was only when I got the report that I found it what had been going on. I was absolutely devastated. I only took out my insurance for the sake of my children. Now I feel like I signed a deal with the devil.’
Zurich refused to pay out on Mrs Joiner’s claim, which she is challenging through the financial ombudsman.
'I was absolutely devastated. I only took out my insurance for the sake of my children. Now I feel like I signed a deal with the devil' Tanya Joiner
She is also demanding an apology and explanation from G4S for the invasion of her home.
If that fails, she will sue them for damages in court in a bid to embarrass them and stop similar techniques by other firms.
Lawyers insist the company’s actions were illegal and Liberty is pursuing the case on her behalf.
But G4S says it has done nothing wrong and was merely pursuing normal procedures – raising the prospect of thousands more people being subjected to the same intrusive tactics.
Corinna Ferguson, legal officer for Liberty, said: ‘Of course insurance companies need protection from bogus claims, but that shouldn’t mean riding roughshod over people’s privacy.


Investigation: Her disability prevents her from working and in early 2011 she made a claim on her Zurich critical injury insurance policy

‘G4S tricked their way into a disabled woman’s home – which was oppressive and completely disproportionate.
‘Given the power and influence of this company is ever increasing, shouldn’t they have a better grasp of the law?’
'G4S tricked their way into a disabled woman’s home – which was oppressive and completely disproportionate. Given the power and influence of this company is ever increasing, shouldn’t they have a better grasp of the law?' Corinna Ferguson, Liberty
Both Cotswold and G4S boast that surveillance is ‘conducted in line with the principles of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act’.
In fact, the Act makes it clear that any uninvited activity inside a private home is ‘intrusive surveillance’ that would require official authorisation.
In a letter to Mrs Joiner, G4S director of investigations Stephen Cantello said it was ‘usual practice’ to carry out a ‘positive identification’ of the person under surveillance and there were several ways this could be done.
‘In this particular case the field operative decided to use a parcel pretext. This entails a parcel delivery that is signed by the party concerned, supported if possible by covert film. This is acceptable practice,’ he said.

[TonyGosling]

Stop G4S is a UK-based network of various grassroots activist groups, campaigns, NGOs and trade unionists that have a shared interest in holding G4S to account for its track record of human rights abuses across the world and in stopping the company from taking over public services or being given any more control over our lives.

http://www.stopg4s.net/aboutus

The main purpose of the Stop G4S network is to coordinate and facilitate collaboration between different groups and campaigns opposed to G4S. This, we hope, will be achieved through sharing knowledge and resources, networking and strategising together, supporting each other's work and holding joint actions.

We recognise that different groups and organisations may use different tactics depending on their circumstances and on their political perspectives. The network therefore endorses a diversity-of-tactics approach to campaigning against G4S.

Because G4S is involved in so many different human rights abuses and is taking over so many different aspects of the public sector, campaigning against it provides an opportunity for different groups and organisations to work together and make links between different issues, thereby creating a broader understanding of corporate power and the problems with private, profit-driven companies like G4S. From the repression of Palestinians and migrants, through to the dismantling of public services and the exploitation of workers, prisoners and service users, the unifying thread is a private company that is making vast profits while abusing people placed in its ‘care’.

Many people are directly or indirectly affected by G4S and its activities. From migrants and refugees incarcerated in special prisons run by G4S, to Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli prisons at which G4S provides services and equipment, to public service users, welfare claimants and prisoners who are exploited by G4S. The Stop G4S network works with and in solidarity with people negatively affected by G4S and not on their behalf. We will endeavour to highlight their experiences and their resistance.

While the focus of the network is on targeting G4S, we recognise that other corporations are not much better and that it is governments that allow G4S and other companies to carry out these human rights abuses by contracting them to do the state's dirty work, then turning a blind eye to their crimes. Our focus on G4S should not be misinterpreted as an unwillingness to hold rival companies or states accountable for their repressive practises.

With all of the above in mind, Stop G4S has identified the following as the joint aims of the network:

1. Making the G4S brand toxic; and

2. Causing G4S financial damage.

To achieve these aims, we have identified the following priorities for our collaborative work in the near future:

a. Raising public awareness and publicising G4S' track record of human rights abuses to a variety of audiences. This will requite broadening our network and making more links with other groups and organisations that may share our interest in stopping G4S.

b. Community-based campaigning. The network will act as a support base and provide resources to enable activists and campaigners to campaign effectively in their local communities.

c. Monitoring public sector contracts that G4S holds or is likely to bid on, with the aim of successfully pressuring public authorities to terminate existing contracts and excluding G4S from future ones on the grounds that the company has shown a complete disregard for human rights and other basic rights and standards.

d. Putting pressure on G4S' shareholders and investors to divest from the company.

e. Pressuring charities, voluntary organisations and private companies to cut their ties with G4S, especially where G4S is using such relationships to whitewash its complicity in human rights abuses.

[TonyGosling]

In the future our police, lawyers and jails will be run by G4S
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/04/future-our-police-lawyers-and-jail s-will-be-run-g4s

Barrister Russell Fraser explains the reality of cuts to legal aid.
By Russell Fraser Published 22 April 2013 17:42


Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling at the London Guildhall last year. Photo: Getty.

"The degree of civilisation in a society is revealed by the way it treats its prisoners” is a quote for which history claims many authors. Dostoyevsky, Churchill and Pope John Paul II have each been paired with it perhaps saying something of the power contained in the idea. Regardless, it is not a sentiment shared by our current Lord Chancellor – the first non-lawyer in the post since 1672 – Chris Grayling, who on 8 April announced a new package of cuts to legal aid.

Grayling does not believe prisoners should have access to free legal advice concerning matters such as treatment, sentencing, disciplinary action and parole board reviews. Instead, he tells us, the prisoner can raise a complaint through an internal procedure. Never mind that many prisoners will be burdened with much of the health, educational and social problems associated with criminality which will make it quite impossible for them to put their own case effectively. How prisoners are treated is fundamental to their prison existence and to restrict their ability to ensure that treatment is lawful begins to look like a form of punishment in itself.

In criminal legal aid, the consultation forwards plans for a model of price competitive tendering. Bids will be invited below a fixed ceiling for batches of work around the country. It is a system in which only warehouse law firms will exist and high street firms will either die or be absorbed by large corporations intent on delivering legal services cheaply for maximum profit. The future will be one in which suspects are apprehended by G4S investigators, transported by G4S security, detained by G4S officers and imprisoned in G4S jails – at each stage represented by G4S lawyers.

With price competition will come the removal of the right to the solicitor of your choice. Representation will be allocated by rota and it will be made difficult to change solicitor should you wish to for any reason. The idea that quality can survive the casual vandalism of these proposals is absurd. The model of turbo price competition used in some US states tells us that.

Fees in criminal legal aid is a favourite target of justice secretaries and Grayling is no exception. Yet, there has been no increase in barristers’ fees since the 1990s. While a handful of criminal QCs do earn significant sums the rest of us do not. It may be that such fees should be discussed but not, as the justice secretary does, in a bid to undermine the entire system. As a trainee barrister I have a guaranteed income of £12,000 during my first year. We do not ask for sympathy, merely accuracy.

On the civil side the planned fee reductions mean many lawyers’ practices will simply no longer be viable. So those who specialise in housing, homelessness, actions against the police and judicial review – all crucial mechanisms for ensuring state accountability – will disappear. Their successors will be the warehouse G4S model or non-specialist charitable organisations staffed by well-intentioned but resource-poor lawyers. There will be no equality of arms in the courtroom.

As a result of previous reforms, from 1 April this year a raft of areas no longer attract free legal advice. Employment cases, non-asylum immigration cases, consumer rights and welfare benefits were all removed from scope. In the case of the latter it is estimated that 40% of challenges before the benefits tribunal succeed. Money would be saved by the Department of Work and Pensions making the correct decisions in the first place. There has been no opportunity to yet assess the impact of these changes but that has not deterred Grayling from unleashing a new round of cuts.

There is to be a residency test for those claiming civil legal aid. Applicants must be in the country lawfully to be able to apply and for those who are, an additional requirement of 12 months’ residence is imposed. This is the sort of divisive approach to immigration we have come to expect from the Conservative side of the coalition. Children of people here unlawfully will be left without the protection that would otherwise see them housed and looked after. Foreign students and people here on a temporary visas will be unable to challenge state wrongdoing.

If money is all that Chris Grayling understands then he should understand this: these proposals will cost more in terms of the miscarriages of justice, social harm, and disruption to the court service which will result, than the £200 million he seeks to save.



Russell Fraser is a pupil barrister and joint secretary of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. He has written this in a personal capacity.

[Frazzel]

2 – 8 November 2015: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex
A week of action has been called to take action against the construction of the North Wales Prison in Wrexham.

The prison will be the second largest prison in Europe, holding more than 2100 people and costing £250 million to build. Australian contractor Lend Lease was awarded the contract to build the Wrexham titan prison by the government in May 2014 [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-27630202].

Local people have resisted the prison for over half a decade; objecting to planning applications, lobbying, going to meetings. Full planning permission was eventually granted in November 2014 despite local resistance. It is now a construction site.
What is taking place?

Demonstrations at the prison and its suppliers. Find your local prison profiteer here: http://www.cape-campaign.org/prison-profiteers

Noise & solidarity demos at prisons all over the UK

Information nights, workshops & film showings to ignite more resistance to the prison industrial complex in the UK

The CAPE Campaign will also be supporting existing events taking place during the week including:

The United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) Annual Procession on 31 October. The UFFC is a national coalition of families and friends of those that have died in the custody of police and prison officers as well as those who are killed in immigration detention and secure psychiatric hospitals in the UK. Assemble 31 October 12Noon at Trafalgar Square for a silent procession along Whitehall followed by a noisy protest at Downing Street.

The Surround Yarl’s Wood Demonstration at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre on Saturday 7th November: https://www.facebook.com/events/755942137885113/

How to Get Involved

Contact Community Action on Prison Expansion – info@cape-campaign.org

Most people will be taking action locally, however we are organising transport and accommodation for people from further afield to stay in the North West. Please get in touch!

Contact a local group close to you – http://www.cape-campaign.org/about/local-groups

Tell us about something you are organising so we can help promote it
(A)

[outsider]

'Don't give G4S & Serco the power to arrest':
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-tories-giving-g4s-serco-th e-power-to-arrest?

[TonyGosling]

Private firms may be given powers to arrest people: Companies would be able to hold individuals who fail to pay fines imposed by courts
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4927688/Private-firms-given-po wers-arrest-people.html

Private security firms such as G4S could be empowered to arrest fine dodgers
The Ministry of Justice published tender documents to run fine collections
They want to outsource the collection of fines imposed by the nation's courts
The controversial deal is believed to be worth in the region of £290 million
By IAN DRURY FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 01:38, 28 September 2017 | UPDATED: 01:47, 28 September 2017

Private firms may be given new powers to arrest people in a controversial move that has raised alarm.

The proposals would allow, for the first time, staff from companies such as G4S to arrest members of the public for failing to pay fines imposed by the courts.

The plans would see HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) privatising part of its compliance and enforcement operations in a deal worth £290million.

Private security guards could get powers to arrest people for failing to pay court fines +2
Private security guards could get powers to arrest people for failing to pay court fines

Justice Secretary David Lidington published a controversial tender document in August +2
Justice Secretary David Lidington published a controversial tender document in August

The measures were slipped out as a tender by the Ministry of Justice during the summer.

Under the proposals, the Government could transfer all services carried out by Civilian Enforcement Officers, who are civil servants employed by HMCTS, to the private sector.

This would include the arrest and detention of individuals who fail to pay off their debts and haul them to court.

The courts can already allow authorised agencies, including private firms, to send bailiffs to a person’s home to seize possessions to encourage them to pay debts.

But this would potentially be a sweeping expansion of the powers – covering so-called warrants of arrest, which are issued by JPs to compel an indivual to attend court.

The tender document, published in August, said: ‘As part of this procurement exercise, MoJ would also like to explore the potential transfer of service of all warrants currently executed by Civilian Enforcement Officers.

‘Civilian Enforcement Officers are authorised to execute warrants of arrest, commitment and detention issued by a magistrate covering fines and community penalty breaches.’

Nearly 200 civil service jobs could be transferred from the civil service under the proposals. The consultation was due to end today.

Hundreds of millions of pounds in fines and fees imposed by courts on criminals have not been paid.

Sums owed by offenders in England and Wales have rocketed by almost £200million in just two years, according to official statistics.

Unpaid charges soared to £747million in the year ending September from £557million in the same period in 2014 – an increase of 34 per cent.

Some of the money will be compensation that criminals were ordered to pay their victims.

A HMCTS spokesman said: ‘We take the recovery and enforcement of court fines very seriously. Courts already have the power to issue warrants through enforcement agencies, and we have robust processes in place to ensure agency staff comply to the same standards as HMCTS staff.

‘While no decisions have been made, we are in discussion with providers to extend the work of enforcement agencies and will make further announcements in due course.’

[outsider]

And in the States:
'California Is Running Out of Inmates to Fight Its Fires':
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/how-much-longer-w ill-inmates-fight-californias-wildfires/547628/

'For a dollar an hour and credit toward early parole, more than 1,700 convicted felons fought on the front lines of the destructive wildfires that raged across Northern California this October. While communities from Sonoma to Mendocino evacuated in the firestorm’s path, these inmates worked shifts of up to 72 straight hours to contain the blaze and protect the property residents left behind, clearing brush and other potential fuel and digging containment lines often just feet away from the flames. Hundreds more are on the fire line now, combatting the inferno spreading across Southern California.

Inmates have been fighting California’s wildfires since the 1940s, when the state first called up prisoners to replace men assisting the war effort. More than 3,700 men and women—and even some juvenile offenders—now voluntarily serve on the force. Collectively, they make up roughly a third of the state’s wildfire-fighting personnel, and work an average of 10 million hours each year responding to fires and other emergencies and handling community-service projects like park maintenance, reforestation, and fire and flood protection....'

'...The pool of potential recruits was limited long before the courts’ mandate. It comprises only inmates who earn a minimum-custody status through good behavior behind bars and excludes arsonists, kidnappers, sex offenders, gang affiliates, and those serving life sentences. To join the squad, inmates must meet high physical standards and complete a demanding course of training. They also have to volunteer.
“But,” cautioned David Fathi, the director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, “you have to understand the uniquely coercive prison environment, where few things are clearly voluntary.” In the eyes of criminal-justice reformers, corrections officials recruit inmates under duress. “In light of the vast power inequality between prisoners and those who employ them,” Fathi continued, “there is a real potential for exploitation and abuse.”....'

But things are even worse - I got an email from 'Color of Change', and here is an exert:
'....Prisoners, not protected under any work safety regulations, often return from fighting fires with broken ankles, arms, burns, and suffering from extreme exhaustion. To make matters worst, many of the prisoners doing this work are women, most of whom are mothers. These mothers often choose to take on this dangerous work because they are told that it could accelerate their release date by earning “good behavior”, usually resulting in a mere two days off your sentence.4

Even California's Governor Jerry Brown has stated that prisoners working as firefighters are doing "very important" work however, they continue to be unfairly compensated for their work. In fact, prisoners are being “leased out” in a fashion similar to slavery, their labor is given to public and private corporations as a part of the “convict-leasing system.” 5 Slavery in America technically ended in 1865, but a loophole in the 13th Amendment has allowed it to go on today “as a punishment for crimes. ” As a result, there are more people performing mandatory, essentially unpaid, hard labor in America today than there were in 1830.6

The more than 2 million incarcerated people in America today are legally considered slaves under the U.S constitution. Prison labor is a billion dollar industry that provides few if any positive outcomes for those who are actually doing the work--the prisoners. Supporters of prison labor argue that it is good for prisoners because it gives them something productive to do and that it can provide job skills that are transferable. However, this is often not the case. Rather, the prison industry is concerned about making money by contracting prison labor, not about the wellbeing of prisoners.....'