Rural counties increasingly rely on prisons to provide firefighters and EMTs who work for free, but the inmates have little protection or future job prospects
- Written by J. Carlee Purdum, Research Assistant Professor, Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center, Texas A&M University
Inmate fire crews work alongside professional fire crews and do the same work. But they receive little, if any, pay.David McNew/AFP via Getty ImagesIf you call 911 in rural Georgia, the nearest emergency responders might come from the local prison.
In 1963, the Georgia Department of Corrections began a program to train incarcerated people as...