Cayla Mihalovich, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. In a historic policy change, California is moving to pay incarcerated firefighters the federal minimum wage during active fires.  The wage increase, funded through the new state budget, follows years of advocacy to improve pay and working conditions

This year, Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, a Democrat from Thousand Oaks, is proposing a new bill to establish education standards based on those recommendations, but some law enforcement and criminal justice reform advocates are skeptical — albeit for different reasons.

Nearly two dozen state prisons last week imposed sweeping restrictions on their incarcerated population — including shutting off all outside communication. Now, hundreds of prisoners are reported to be on a hunger strike to protest the system’s largest restrictions since the pandemic.