The case for convict firefighters being allowed to become paid firefighters after prison

A 2018 study showed that 40% of California’s firefighters are prisoners reporting that nearly 4,000 inmates helped the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection combat wildfires in the state. Part of the reason California does this because it saves the state roughly $100 million per year, a good sum of money. Many cite that labor is cruel, mirroring slave labor as inmates receive no death benefits and make only $2 an hour.
David Fathi, the director of the ACLU's (American Civil Liberties Union) National Prison Project, stated that "This is a situation where the usual checks on employer exploitation and abuse really don't apply. And we think the solution is that prisoner workers have to be protected by the same laws as all other workers." He cites that prison is a “coercive” environment where prisoners are a vulnerable workforce as they cannot unionize. They are not granted minimum wage or other laws and if they are injured or killed, they are not covered by worker’s compensation.
Thus, the case for paid convict firefighters. Of course, there's the righteous argument that prisoners deserve as much in human rights as any other person residing inside the United States which is entirely true. However, that’s not always the most convincing argument. Rather, we should look to the long term. Prison overcrowding is a massive problem in America, eighteen states have prisons are over capacity and twenty-two national prisons carry more than double their capacity. Moreover, people have criticized the “prisoner reform” system as failing to actually change anything (2/3 of arrested convicts go back to jail). People argue one of the main reasons for this is because of prison kills prisoners abilities to reintegrate into society forcing them to resort back to crimes. More argue that paid convicts should be given the skills to use when they're released, to maximize their chance of succeeding and being productive members of society when finally released.
Of course, most of America won’t be influenced by the pains of convicts, that's never how it functioned. Rather, from a (typical) policymakers point of view, there are 2.3 million prisoners in this country and the threat that these prisoners will replace paid labor is a concern that many face. Labor unions and others have long expressed a concern that prison, free labor, will undercut other labor sources. Of course paying convicts would resolve this fear while also benefiting convicts.