¿Por qué las cárceles de California utilizan a sus propios empleados como alarmas humanas contra incendios?
California spends tens of millions paying prison staff to act as human smoke detectors because fixing broken fire alarms is deemed too expensive.
California prisons keep their own employees on constant lookout for smoke and flames, turning guards and staff into paid human fire alarms rather than installing working detection systems.
The state spends tens of millions of dollars annually on this makeshift approach. Replacing the broken fire alarms would cost even more, according to prison officials who have chosen the cheaper, riskier option of relying on human eyes and ears.
This practice persists across multiple facilities despite known failures in the electronic systems meant to alert everyone the moment fire breaks out. Instead of modernizing infrastructure built decades ago, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has budgeted for overtime and specialized watches that treat employees as the first and sometimes only line of defense.
The numbers add up quickly: annual expenditures for these human alarm duties run into the tens of millions, a recurring line item that reveals how fiscal caution around capital improvements overrides basic safety upgrades. Prison administrators acknowledge the alarms are unreliable yet keep the workaround in place year after year.
What began as a temporary bridge has hardened into standard operating procedure, leaving incarcerated people and staff alike dependent on someone noticing trouble before it spreads. The policy quietly concedes that prevention through technology is less attractive than paying people to stand watch.
The contradiction is stark: a state that lectures on climate resilience and public safety cannot keep its own prisons from depending on underpaid humans to substitute for machines that no longer function. How many more millions must be funneled into salaries before the alarms themselves are finally fixed?
Original reporting: CalMatters.
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