Incarcerated firefighters earn $5-10/day and can't get hired as firefighters after release

California's Conservation Camp program uses approximately 1,600 incarcerated individuals as wildland firefighters, paying them $5.80-$10.24 per day plus $1/hour during active firefighting. They constitute 10-15% of California's wildland firefighting force and save the state an estimated $100M+ annually. After release, they face a cruel catch-22: most fire departments require EMT certification, but a single felony conviction makes a person ineligible for EMT certification for at least a decade, and multiple felonies create a permanent ban. California passed AB 2147 in 2020 allowing record expungement for program participants, but the process requires petitioning a judge, which takes months and money, and expungement does not guarantee EMT certification approval. In Colorado, fewer than five graduates of the state's prison firefighter program have landed full-time fire department jobs. This means the state trains thousands of people in a skill the state desperately needs, then bars them from using that skill, wasting both the training investment and the human capital during a firefighter shortage.