Private success stories to do with battling 2 of California's greatest problems-- its wildfires, and its entrenched governmental administrations-- are hard adequate to find.
However press reporter Will McCarthy at our sis documents in the Bay Area uncovered a twofer involving both problems in the individual of Benjamin Fowler, who up until recently was serving a 2nd 10-year prison term. Former owner of a landscaping company, Fowler was good at outdoor work, and had been investing part of his incarcerated time as a prisoner firefighter.
Issue was, all the participants in the program understood that it was literally a dead-end task. Though they were getting lots of hands-on experience, the prisoners understood there was a Catch-22 once they were released: their felony records would keep them from working as firemens.
In late 2020, AB 2147 was passed in the Legislature and signed by the guv. It developed a process "allowing incarcerated people who functioned as inmate firemens to have their records expunged," McCarthy reports. "Prior to its passage, many inmates were unemployable as firefighters after leaving prison since of their rap sheets-- even if they had actually spent years doing the specific same task, and even though California had a shortage of firemens.
"' As soon as I found out about that law being passed, it was probably a two-year procedure,' Fowler stated. "But when I got to the fire camp, I knew that's where I was supposed to be.'".
Now a year out of prison, Fowler finishes tomorrow from a California program that helps former jail firemens get tasks they have actually trained so well for. In a couple of weeks-- in the nick of time for peak fire season-- he takes a task as a United States Forest Service firefighter in Sonoma County.
" When they're with us, they're selecting to be better individuals for themselves, for their buddies and family, for their community," said Cari Chen, the forestry and fire recruitment program's Bay Area director. "It's not simply a job.
You do not have to be a criminologist to deduce that having a full-time job-- and an interesting one, at that-- when released from the Big House significantly decreases recidivism.
" When you're in prison, you're a number," Fowler stated. "But I was able to return. It became a real drive.".
California is seeing essential progress on this front, however there's more to do. Criminal conviction histories continue to restrict EMT-- emergency medical professional-- accreditations, which are crucial to getting community fire department jobs. Court challenges to this were rejected in 2015.
That needs to change.
" People who are safe and received accreditation as EMTs ought to be accredited as EMTs," states Andrew Ward, an attorney at the Institute for Justice.
" It helps them support themselves, and it assists California, which desperately requires more very first responders. AB 2147 was an action in the best instructions, but it was constantly a narrow exception. It's not that California required a special law for inmate firefighters. It needs to eliminate these ridiculous bans in the first place. The federal government should not be denying anyone the right to work because of unassociated criminal activities.".
Advocates at the institute point out that California categorically bans anyone with a felony conviction from acquiring an EMT accreditation for 10 years after release from prison, which it bans people with 2 felony convictions forever.
EMTs are not paramedics. The certification is an entry-level one so that firefighters can perform basic, non-invasive first-response methods, such as CPR, inspecting blood pressure and providing oxygen. Especially considered that we are now doing an exceptional job training prisoner firefighters provided the oversupply of wildland fires every summer and fall in California, it's ridiculous that we are not enabling them to compete for steady, non-seasonal firefighting jobs.
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