More than 2,000 prisoners are paying back their debts to society by fighting the wildfires currently consuming northern California. For about a buck an hour, they volunteer to risk their life.

Today, more than 2,000 volunteer inmate firefighters, including 58 youth offenders, are battling wildfire flames throughout CA. Inmate firefighters serve a vital role, clearing thick brush down to bare soil to stop the fire's spread. #CarrFire #FergusonFire #MendocinoComplex — CA Corrections (@CACorrections) July 31, 2018

They are inmate firefighters and, despite their heroics, they will never join a fire crew in free society.

To become a firefighter in California, the state requires certification as an emergency medical technician. But because occupational licensing laws bar felons from earning EMT licenses, ex-convicts can’t get the job.

This isn’t just an injustice – it’s a waste of acquired skills and state resources. Inmates have to volunteer for the job in the first place, then go through significant training while incarcerated. To even get the chance to skill-up, they need a generally clean rap sheet. For instance, arsonists and attempted escapees need not apply. This provides a powerful incentive for good behavior in prison, a motivation that unfortunately disappears as soon as inmates walk out of prison.

Is it any wonder, with policies like these all over America, that the national recidivism rate remains around 70 percent?

"What's the point of letting people out,” prisoner rights advocate Katherine Katcher rightly asks, “if there's still an invisible prison around them?"

California certainly owes a debt of gratitude to these prisoners. As the Economist noted last October, around 4,000 low-level felons made up 30 percent of the forest firefighters who beat back the flames by clearing brush and hefting heavy equipment. One female inmate even died in the smoke. Sadly, she wouldn’t have found a career waiting for her on the other side anyway. Until the law changes, Arthur Rizer compares this kind of treatment to “slave labor.”

“The state of California is unabashed by that fact,” the director of Criminal Justice & Civil Liberties Policy at the conservative R Street Institute tells me, “with one state official even touting that the program can reduce California’s firefighting “costs up to $100 million a year.”

Inmates farther south have better opportunities. Arizona also turns the incarcerated into impromptu firefighters, but they also give them a chance to start a career once out of prison. Republican Gov. Doug Ducey approved $1.5 million in funding to create a professional fire crew made up entirely of ex-cons. And it’s an obvious win-win: inmates are less likely to commit crimes when they’re fighting fires and working toward a real job.

California should take note. Very soon, and for a second time, that state may owe everything to the incarcerated hotshots and imprisoned fire crews. They deserve some recognition at the very least. Someone shouldn’t be burnt by society after paying their debt to society by literally fighting the flames.