"Atta baby!" Fire Captain Darus Ane shouted, extending his fist for a pound. "Nice work, baby! Beautiful!"

The approaching inmate wheezed back a "Thanks, Cap!" before slowly lifting his hand from where it had been pushing down on his thigh with each step.

A few yards downhill, Barr kept his eyes focused on the ground as he approached the ledge where Ane, a smiling Joe Biden look-alike with darker hair and a more genuine tan, was doling out words of encouragement.

"Maintain! Last 50 to the top!" Ane called to him. Barr huffed and puffed, shaking his head as he passed, refusing to make eye contact with either me or the captain.

Barr had been at camp for six weeks, and he was exhausted. He hadn’t seen a fire yet, but every day he woke up and threw his body into whatever task Ane and the foremen set before him: gathering brush in the forest, clearing debris by the side of the road, pushing through a timed hike like this one.

If he didn’t get to the top in time, he would get written up; dawdle up the mountain more than once, and he could get sent back to jail. He and his 15-man fire crew — crew two — were charging uphill in a steady stream, swerving around rocks and scrub. Some could barely breathe. Others leaped like it was nothing, sweat forming a dark V on the back of their orange jumpsuits.

Once he settled into the camp routine, when the initial relief of being away from the nightmare of county jail wore off, the severity of this work became apparent. The only possible relief would come from getting more physically fit: “You just have to train,” he said.

Ane has been leading inmate crews for two and a half years, enough time for him to hone a tough but upbeat disposition in the hopes that he can reform his charges. "We gotta break them down physically to build them up mentally," he told me. "We show them that it takes hard work to be successful, and hard work usually pays off."

The CDCR and state officials often frame the inmate firefighting program in a similar way, emphasizing the benefits of building discipline through physical labor and helping others.

"Doing good things in life can change your whole world for you, because you will be remembered for that something good, instead of the negative," former L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca told future fire camp inmates at a county jail graduation ceremony in 2012.

When Barr finally reached the summit, he was relieved to find that time had yet to run out. But just as he caught his breath it was time to pile back into the truck and head to another mountainside. There, crew two would throw on 40-pound packs, goggles, gloves, helmets, and boots, and spend three or four hours practicing what’s called “cutting line,” the primary contribution that inmates make to the surge of overlapping efforts involved in fighting and containing a wildfire.

When cutting line, the goal is to carve a path of exposed mineral soil in the earth that will stop the flames, blocking their access to more fuel. The work is difficult, hot, and monotonous. The most senior guys on the crew walk in front with chainsaws, and all they do is saw, saw, saw. Other inmates chop the chaparral with a Pulaski, a tool that is half axe, half adze. As one of the newest guys on the crew, Barr was third from the back with a combination rake and hoe, called a McLeod, bending to scrape the dirt and push grasses out of the way until his back was sore and his body drenched in sweat.

Paid firefighters cut line too, sometimes, but mostly they drive the bulldozers, they grip the hoses, they scribble strategy on clipboards, and they dump water and bright red retardant from air tankers and helicopters. Pretty much all inmates will do on a fire is head into steep terrain, where bulldozers can’t reach, and cut line.

"Their value is that force of human power," said Janet Upton, the deputy director of communications at Cal Fire.

As he toiled in the sun for less $2 a day, Barr couldn't help but point out what he saw as fire camp’s unacknowledged historical precedent: slavery. (Prisoner firefighters in California earn that base salary and an additional $1 an hour when they are on a fire.) “It’s not right,” he told me.

Barr’s not the only inmate to make that comparison. A few years ago, when University of Toronto sociologist Philip Goodman was working on his dissertation at University of California – Irvine, he spoke to more than 45 prisoner firefighters. Ten used the word "slavery" to describe their experiences, but seven of those ten also used the word “rehabilitation.”

Later that afternoon, back at camp, Barr was free to move about as he pleased: to play Ping-Pong or pinochle, to lift weights, to build a wooden clock with the circle saws in the hobby shop, to catch a movie on one of two big-screen TVs. He could take out as many books as he wanted from the library, rather than just one a week. He could joke around with guys of other races without fear of fights.

One of the inmate chefs was outside plucking corn, peppers, and tomatoes from the camp garden to put in the salsa for that evening’s taco night. Two black Labradors roamed the camp off-leash, creating an oddly domestic feeling, even if they were there to sniff for drugs.

“It’s better than where I was at. I’ll just leave it at that,” Barr said. “Here, at least, you can come outside.”

He mostly hoped to make it through the next 11 months as quickly as possible. He also grew impatient with any talk of how this program could somehow fundamentally change him, as a person, for the better.

Inmates are often insulted by the state’s claims to be teaching them how to work. Most come from poverty, where holding down two minimum wage jobs and putting in 70-hour weeks will get you nowhere fast. Many, as people of color, face profound socially and politically condoned opposition in ascending the socioeconomic ladder, regardless of how hard they work.

Barr only has a high school education, and says selling crack seemed like the most lucrative option available to him. He regrets dropping out of junior college after less than a semester, and he snorts with laughter when he hears that part of the justification for sending him to fight fires is that he must learn how to work hard in order to abandon his criminal ways.

“Of course I knew how to work hard before,” he said. “I was just working hard at something illegal.”