Plan to Expand Inmate Firefighters' Allowable Violent Convictions Scrapped

California corrections officials on Tuesday dropped a plan to include prisoners with certain violent backgrounds in the nation’s largest and oldest inmate firefighting unit, a day after the proposal was first reported by The Associated Press.

The state still plans to expand the program to include inmates who have up to seven years left to serve on their sentences, instead of the current five years, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) spokesman Jeffrey Callison told the AP.

But as for considering inmates who have been convicted of some violent crimes, “We will not be changing that,” he said.

A different CDCR spokesman, Bill Sessa, told KQED there were already some inmates with violent records in the program. The new changes would have simply expanded the offenses that were eligible.

KQED found at least one inmate with armed robbery on his record working in a camp last year. Sessa could not immediately say what the expanded offenses included. However, inmates serving life sentences or those convicted of murder, rape or arson were never considered for the expansion.

Gov. Jerry Brown would have had to endorse the expansion. Sessa said there was no pressure from Brown’s office to reverse course. And both Sessa and Callison say dumping the planned expansion was not because of national attention and backlash from some politicians and advocates.

CDCR officials were looking for ways to increase the pool of eligible inmates over concerns that California would continue to battle more frequent and intense wildfires across the state. Realignment is also a concern as more inmates are shifted to county jails instead of state prisons, further depleting a pool of potential enrollees into the program.

The program provides nearly 4,000 inmates for mostly grunt work on fire lines. They are paid $2 a day and $1 an hour when on the fire line. The program saves the state between $80 million and $100 million a year, said Sessa.

The only change to the current program will be adding inmates who have seven years left to serve instead of five. It is not clear if that addition will help make up future deficits in the program, Sessa said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.