The Record Searchlight
SACRAMENTO — The state’s plan to transfer thousands of inmates to county custody could lead prison officials to place even more violent prisoners in California’s 41 minimum-security fire camps, a firefighter’s union leader says. Bob Wolf, president of CDF Firefighters Local 2881, said that might put fire captains who supervise the inmates on the fire lines, and the public, in jeopardy.
“Our captains don’t carry guns. They don’t carry handcuffs with chains. There’s no guards on the fire line with them,” Wolf said. “Even though they have them (the inmates) in their custody, what power do they have over someone who wants to leave?”
Wolf represents the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection captains who supervise the 4,000-plus inmates who work on California’s fires and on work projects. Though California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation guards watch the inmates when they’re at their basecamps for the night, fire captains accompany the crews of 14 to 16 men during the day, whether they’re cutting fire lines or cleaning brush and garbage from the side of roads.
This spring a Record Searchlight investigation found that one in five inmates at the state’s fire camps has a violent criminal history, directly contradicting state prison officials who repeatedly denied putting inmates with violent pasts in the minimum- security camps.
State lawmakers are planning on holding hearings later this month in Sacramento in response to the newspaper’s findings. The lawmakers plan to discuss how to keep the camps safely staffed with suitable inmates, given state prison officials have been ordered to transfer thousands of the least-dangerous prisoners back to the custody of the state’s 58 counties.
Wolf said he’s worried the shortage in the inmate labor pool could cause state prison officials to reach deeper into the prison system, transferring even more inmates with violent convictions to the camps.
“How it plays out, it’s a big question mark,” he said.
But lawmakers, law enforcement lobbyists and Cal Fire officials say they’re working to make sure the prison shift, dubbed “realignment” by state officials, doesn’t place more violent inmates in the camps.
The leading proposal that’s emerged is a system in which county sheriffs send their newly acquired state prison inmates back to the state’s fire camps, said Curtis J. Hill, a retired San Benito County sheriff who lobbies the state Legislature for the California State Sheriffs’ Association. Under the realignment plan, signed into law earlier this year by Gov. Jerry Brown, the state would save about $2 billion each year as it reduces the state’s prison population by 30,000 inmates by 2014.
The move comes in response to state budget cuts as well as orders from the U.S. Supreme Court to reduce the inmate population to correct years of unsafe and overcrowded conditions that violate inmates’ constitutional rights. Counties, which would receive some state funding for each inmate, would be required to house the inmates at local jails, place them under home confinement or find some other way of monitoring them.
Hill said the inmate shift won’t start until October at the earliest. Meanwhile, officials say there won’t be changes in the way fire camps are staffed for this fire season. Law enforcement off icials across the state, including Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, have called the overall realignment plan a threat to public safety, since many local county jails already are at capacity.
Bosenko said that, though the proposal of counties contracting inmates back to the camps has merit and could alleviate some of the counties’ jail-space concerns, he’s worried the push to keep the camps staffed with fewer eligible inmates might mean more violent felons will work under light guard. “The security of CDF staff, correctional officers and the public at large would be another significant concern for me,” Bosenko said.
Claire Frank, Cal Fire’s assistant deputy director overseeing the camps program, said her office is engaged in talks with local law enforcement leaders, prison officials, lawmakers and the governor’s office to make sure that doesn’t happen. “We’re not going to expose our captains to greater risk,” she said.
Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, said keeping the public safe from dangerous inmates is paramount, but so is the state’s “critical need” for the job the inmate crews do.
The inmates are the state’s only firefighting hand crews. The inmate teams are sent out with hand tools to cut lines around blazes, often in terrain where a bulldozer or a retardant-dumping airtanker can’t reach.
State prison officials say that in 2009, fire camp inmates worked 2.6 million combined hours fighting fires.
Each year the inmates, who work for $1 per day while on the fire line, save taxpayers more than $80 million.
In an interview in May, Facilities Capt. Rae Stewart, who oversees the camps for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the camps also play a vital role in the state’s rehabilitation efforts.
“The camp program really allows the inmates to rehabilitate themselves if they truly want to,” Stewart said, adding that a number of inmates at the camps go on to land firefighting jobs. However, CDCR officials say they don’t keep track of how many paroled inmates from the camps re-offend after release.
Stewart admitted prison officials occasionally place inmates convicted of violent felonies at the camps, but only if they’re deemed safe. He’s the first CDCR official to publicly acknowledge that the state does so.
In earlier interviews prison officials repeatedly denied violent inmates were transferred to the camps. The department’s website says that “only minimum custody inmates - both male and female - may participate in the Conservation Camps Program. To be eligible, they must be physically fit and have no history of violent crime including kidnapping, sex offenses, arson or escape.”
Yet CDCR records show that between 2005 and last fall, more than 200 inmates assigned to the camps had been convicted of violent crimes against police.
Some of these involved firearms or left officers injured. More than 30 had been convicted of injuring or killing someone in police chases. There were 14 who had been convicted of voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. There were two convicted kidnappers.
“For the most part inmates that have any kind of violent crime are not committed to camp,” Stewart said.
“However, there are certain crimes defined in the penal code as ‘violent’ that in a case-by-case basis are reviewed on the totality of the offense to determine if they’re eligible for camp or not.”
Any inmate with a history of violent crimes goes through a rigorous screening process at two hard-walled facilities before being placed in the minimum-security camps, Stewart said.
The screening process so far has been unchanged under the realignment plan, prison and Cal Fire officials say.
But Mike Hampton, the chapter president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association who negotiates for the guards assigned to the camps, said he’s worried it might be.
“I don’t have any faith in our department to do anything correctly for our own safety,” he said.
Hampton said there are also lingering concerns among guards about staff vacancies. Though the governor’s office has relaxed a hiring freeze for the guards that had been in place earlier this year, there are still at least 16 vacant corrections officer positions at the camps statewide, Stewart said.
The vacancies, which represent a small portion of the hundreds of employees at the camps, aren’t affecting the camps at this point, both Hampton and Stewart say.
But Wolf, the president of the firefighters union, said state’s budget and the current corrections staffing levels make it impossible for the camps to send a prison guard out with captains who supervise the crews, though doing so might become necessary.
He said the realignment plan should be causing lawmakers to re-evaluate whether the fire camp program is viable, given the revelations about violent inmates already being placed at the camps.
“Look, flat out, our employees in an escape, we can’t prevent someone from doing harm,” he said. “It’s one person against 14 people.”
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