18 U.S.C. § 4125: Public works; prison camps

The Attorney General may make available to the heads of the several departments the services of United States prisoners under terms, conditions, and rates mutually agreed upon, for constructing or repairing roads, clearing, maintaining and reforesting public lands, building levees, and constructing or repairing any other public ways or works financed wholly or in major part by funds appropriated by Congress. The Attorney General may establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him elsewhere than upon Indian reservations, and designate such camps as places for confinement of persons convicted of an offense against the laws of the United States. The expenses of transferring and maintaining prisoners at such camps and of operating such camps shall be paid from the appropriation “Support of United States prisoners”, which may, in the discretion of the Attorney General, be reimbursed for such expenses. As part of the expense of operating such camps the Attorney General is authorized to provide for the payment to the inmates or their dependents such pecuniary earnings as he may deem proper, under such rules and regulations as he may prescribe. All other laws of the United States relating to the imprisonment, transfer, control, discipline, escape, release of, or in any way affecting prisoners, shall apply to prisoners transferred to such camps.