¿Por qué las cárceles de California utilizan a sus propios empleados como alarmas humanas contra incendios?

California's thirty-one prisons have a critical fire safety problem: most have faulty alarm systems. Rather than fix them — a one point five billion dollar proposition — the state has been paying prison employees to watch for fires. CalMatters reports that between twenty twenty and twenty twenty-five, the Department of Corrections spent nearly fifty million dollars on fire watch staff who logged approximately two hundred seventy thousand hours. Last year, spending ballooned to roughly forty million dollars, representing a twenty-five million dollar overrun. To reduce costs, the state is testing a cheaper model at Solano State Prison: hiring administrative assistants at four thousand three hundred fifty-seven dollars monthly instead of veteran prison guards earning nine thousand six hundred forty-seven dollars. Experts warn the situation is unsustainable. A professor who studies disaster preparedness in prisons told CalMatters she was surprised inoperable fire alarm systems were even legal — fire safety infrastructure, she said, is basic emergency preparedness.

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