Out of Lock-up and Into the Fire

Inmates at the site of a wildfire in Southern California's Orange County

Alex Cohen, NPR

--Alex Cohen

Many firefighters get into the profession because it's something they've dreamed of since childhood... but others get into it through crime. For years, California has trained inmates from correctional facilities to fight fires. Often times, these prisoners go on to use their skills as professional firefighters once they're released.

When I arrived today at the base camp for the Freeway Complex Fire, I spotted several groups of inmate firefighters right away -- they're usually the ones dressed in orange jumpsuits.

I spoke with one of these firefighters, 43-year old Michelle Chicarelli of the Rainbow Conservation Camp.

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Tags: california | crime | drugs | fire

12:20 PM ET | 11-17-2008 | permalink

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Inmates' 'Legal Pleasures': From Strippers To Golf

--Heather Murphy

What do inmates who have spent more than ten years in prison most look forward when they get on the outside? Inmates at Airway Heights Corrections Center in Spokane, Washington created a list in a workshop called "re-constructing yourself." The requirement: the participants in the class had to have spent at least 10 years or half their adult life in prison and the items on the list were supposed to be "legal pleasures."

Some of the highlights:

*Toilet alone
*Talking with real people
*Eating when you want to
*Barefoot
*Walking in woods
*Working on bike
*Sex
*Not hearing "cell in"
*Hot bubble bath
*Jumping on waterbed
*Being a kid again
*Go to animal shelter
*Books on tape
*Blues festivals
*Strippers
*Independent choices
*Home-cooked meal
*Golf
*Wrestle with kids
*Circuit City
*Lotto
*Sunrise -- no razor wire
*Flirting with women
*Sports without politics -- for fun
*Climbing trees
*Talk radio
*Looking at houses

12:35 PM ET | 10-30-2008 | permalink

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Persistence and Determination

--Steve Proffitt

This morning we reported on an excavation that began today along a freeway off-ramp north of Los Angeles. Authorities are hoping to find the remains of a fifteen year-old boy.

Roger Madison went missing forty years ago. A few years later, a serial killer named Mack Ray Edwards confessed that Madison was one of at least six children he had killed. But Edwards claimed he didn't remember where he buried the body.

The work may result in the recovery of Madison's remains, four decades after he was killed. But, whatever the result, the two people behind it are examples to all of us about what can be accomplished with some single-minded determination.

Writer Weston DeWalt

Steve Proffitt, NPR

Weston DeWalt is an author and researcher. He learned about Roger Madison's murder while gathering information about another murder victim. He shared his research with LAPD detective Vivian Flores, and for the past three years the two have been virtually joined at the hip, conducting an excruciating investigation into a forty year-old murder.

LAPD Detective Vivian Flores

Steve Proffitt, NPR

Detective Flores is the mother of a ten year-old son, and she says she can't imagine what she would do if he turned up missing. So, while she carried a full caseload as a police detective, she put in long hours, often on her own time, interviewing people, examining old documents, and engaging in old-fashioned detective work, trying to pinpoint the site where the killer disposed of Roger Madison's body.

The Los Angeles Police Department has set up a live Web cam at the site of the dig, and you can watch the progress of the excavation as it happens.

It could be weeks before the dig is complete, and investigators could turn up empty. If they do, it's a good bet that DeWalt and Flores will take that as only a minor set-back, and press on looking for new clues. Attention, criminals: as long as this duo is around, think twice before conducting your next caper.

Tags: LAPD | murder | serial killer

1:18 PM ET | 10- 6-2008 | permalink

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Black on Brown

--Gary Dauphin

Today's segment on California moving forward with a 2005 consent decree calling for prisons to be desegregated, touches distantly on the ever-sticky issue of black and brown relations in the country's biggest state. Away from the balkanized warfare in the state's cell blocks, where blacks, whites, Asians and Latinos from northern and southern Cali fight over precious square feet of concrete (and associated drug profits), shifting demographics have transformed the political relationship between so-called minority groups. Whether we're talking about the myth of Obama's "Latino Problem," or fears of a black v. brown homicide spike in LA over the last few years, the mental image of ethnic conflict now revolves around brown-on-black conflict, rather than the traditional specter of white-on-brown/black racism.

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1:19 PM ET | 08- 6-2008 | permalink

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