Inmates Could Staff Fire Stations In St. Marys, Ga.
This such a terrible idea.
For starters, do you really want your fireman splitting his attention between the children in your burning house, and where the drug gang he is responsible for has gotten off to?
Do you really want someone convicted of theft searching through your house?
I’m sure any objections from the firemen towards being drafted as prison guards will be painted as some sort of union slackery.
Stupid, stupid, stoo-pid.
Ah, the righteous crusade continues to reform the essential functions of government by eliminating those useless layabouts who take money from the government and contribute nothing; firefighters.
Just one question, what incentive does an inmate have to not just stand there and watch a house burn?
AK-47?
Inmate crews are already used for wildland fire incidents. They work their asses off for very little money and just the chance to get outside and be proud of a hard days work.
Obviously you would still need trained firefighters for medical calls, and medical calls make up the largest percentage of calls firefighters get, so their usefulness would be limited. But I would rather have a 45 year old, blue collar, semi-literate mechanic with an alcohol problem doing my routine pump maintenance than a 17 year old “volunteer”.
For the most part they don’t need additional incentive; just point them in the right direction. The main problem you usually have is too much enthusiasm without much forethought. (Probably the same thing that got them in trouble in the first place)
I’m sure the politicians who proposed this would be happy to make the same deal; not much pay, but the satisfaction of a job well done.
And no pension.
Is it just me, or do these sound like jobs? You know like the kind that people are looking for? The kind we apparently need to lower taxes on millionaires for so the Job Creators[sup]TM[/sup] can do their thing?
Have virtual slave labor do them, or pay unconvicted, if not innocent, people needing jobs to do them? But, of course, that would be bad because the government would be funding it.
Why pay these guys anything at all? Just call it “recreation time” and make it completely voluntary. Fuck trained fire fighters sucking off the public teet. The only problem I see with this plan is that they are limiting it to fire fighters. Why not teachers, nurses, bus drivers, etc? Just slap electronic monitoring on them and let them do their thing.
what incentive do volunteer firemen have not to just stand there and watch the house burn?
They’re volunteers?
Aside from the 100s of other problems I can see with this idea…did whoever dreamed this one up realize that firefighters do sometimes get KILLED in the line of duty? Can you even begin to imagine the lawsuits that would spring up if an inmate was killed fighting a fire/
Not to mention that firefighters require, ya know, training. Which is work. Which is something a lot of thiefs want to avoid, which is why they are in jail.
I just do not see this as a good idea.
I’d have no problem with inmate labor being used for unskilled labor such a picking crops. However, I can’t see a firefighter having a lot of confidence in the guy at his back if it’s a convict.
I could see this as a career-building opportunity for the inmates, if convicted criminals are allowed to be hired as firemen in Georgia. Are they?
Otherwise, I can only see it as a really stupid, stupid, stupid idea.
Oh sure, the inmates will be experienced firefighters when they’re released, but what good will that do them? Those jobs will be going to current inmates.
Where my dad was, they had inmates at the VA hospital. He calls Leavenworth his ‘college years’.
I think it’s good to be useful. Being in the position where you can help saves lives (literally or figuratively) may be a really good thing. I assume they have a hefty screening process.
My issue is that slave labor/indentured servitude is legal in the US.
Good point. Perhaps I didn’t think that all the way through.
Cons aren’t always violent criminals. I have a friend that was in prison for a combo of having cocaine on him and identity theft. Surprisingly, he’s very polite, responsible, and otherwise honest. And a scholar.
Wouldn’t want a kiddie-banger in the firehouse, though. >shudder<
It’s not merely legal, it’s explicitly constitutional.
Still, if I were hiring someone and found they were an ex con and they said ‘I was a firefighter’ versus ‘I did the dishes’, that would be helpful.
And I wouldn’t want a Coke head ID thief rescuing me from a fire, no matter how “honest” of a guy he was.