And if the way to cheap labor for risky, highly needed manual labor is through incarcerating people, you create all kind of problems around perverse incentives.

Yes, unless it is voluntary, which it is.

Is anything in prison really voluntary?

Nobody is stopping you from being a firefighter outside of jail.

Have you tried? Do you have your certs? Would you pass the physical? Background check?

I mean if your concern is "people in prison have an easier path to being a firefighter" maybe we should reconsider what it means to be one?

My concern only becomes an issue if prisons put them on parity with actual trained firefighters (as was being suggested, but is not the case). Presently they are not, and they are not used that way. They usually do not do the same types or level of work.

I think the first step is people educating themselves even marginally on the topic of discussion before proposing policy changes.

No one has a response, they just downvote because they don’t like the reality of the situation?

Because no one is actually seriously proposing to pay prisoners the same rate as real firefighters; we just shouldn't be using prisoners. Would you allow prisoners to volunteer as teachers, nurses, engineers? Why is the market for firefighters the only one that gets free volunteers from this pool?

But it's not just hurting the firefighter market, lots of people just have issues with using prisoners as slaves.

> Would you allow prisoners to volunteer as teachers, nurses, engineers?

If part of their job description was the equivalent of clearing brush/cutting fire lines in emergencies, I might consider it.

> Why is the market for firefighters the only one that gets free volunteers from this pool?

Do you have another source of willing, not-risk-averse, physically fit and competent people that are not doing anything else, know each other already, can be there ready to work together at a moment’s notice, and won’t bail partway through to go fill an instacart order?

This also has to be balanced against the perverse incentive to construct bullshit laws to justify mass incarceration to get more prison slaves. Not a hypothetical either; this actually happened, because the US Constitution actually says very little about human rights.