“Another Second Chance”

Many scholars and practitioners treat rehabilitation as a black box that, if working, necessarily outputs low(er) recidivism rates. In contrast, this article proposes a constructionist view that asks how those on the front lines of the “carceral archipelago” actually think about, and experience, rehabilitation. Here I examine California's prison fire camps, atypical carceral settings in which state prisoners work as wildland firefighters. The camps present a puzzle: how is it that there exists in California—routinely considered an extreme case in the shift toward warehouse prisons—a penal setting in which rehabilitation not only survives, but affects many aspects of everyday life for prisoners, staff, and administrators alike? The answer, I argue, is that despite some important historical continuities—especially around work and the twin impulses to reform and punish (cf. Garland 1985; Hutchinson 2006)—rehabilitation has evolved considerably. This includes a focus on an abstract notion of work ethic not dependent on the learning of concrete work skills, as well as a neoliberal discourse about personal responsibility. In sum, rehabilitation exists in the fire camps not in spite of the “punitive turn,” but in many ways precisely because of it. Implications include: (1) rehabilitation can be (and perhaps always is) more malleable and multifaceted than is often recognized; (2) the fire camps are simultaneously prisons and nonprisons, and those in them both inmates and heroes; and (3) punishment is a messy, variegated phenomenon in which the relationships between larger discourses and social structures and practices on the ground are dynamic and varied.