[Nkuna]

> there is no "volunteer[ing]" in prison.

>> "It's a great thing," Pate tells me. "It beats the alternative. Rather than sitting in your tiny little cell, you get to come out here."

>> They were just thinking about their options in prison, and in that perspective, the farm looked pretty good.

You're making the point of OP. When the only other option is "sitting in your tiny little cell", there's not much choice in it. It's less volunteering, and more escaping a psychologically untenable situation.

Given other options, I doubt many inmates would be willing to 'volunteer' or work for peanuts.

[gambiting]

Yeah, it's like the rest of the US justice system "you can plead guilty and with the time we kept you in jail waiting for trial you can go home tomorrow, or you can go to trial at some unspecified point in the future and risk going to prison for 20 years - which one do you want?"

There is no free choice in that question. Just an illusion of one.

[stickfigure]

What are those other options? Take away the volunteer opportunity? Stop punishing people?

Just FYI, most of the non-prisoner firefighters in California are also volunteers. In my district (north Solano county), 90% of firefighters are volunteers. We don't get paid.