The U.S. Army is authorized to create civilian prison labor camps on military installations, according to a little-noticed regulation. The camps are allowed if the request comes from the Federal Bureau of Prisons or state corrections facilities under leasing requirements defined by federal law.
WND's discovery of the regulation comes shortly after Bush administration directives expanding presidential powers during an emergency.
The Army prison camp policy is defined in Army Regulation 210-35, entitled "Installations: Civilian Inmate Labor Camps," signed Feb. 14, 2005, by Sandra R. Riley, then-administrative assistant to the secretary of the Army.
The regulation revises an earlier civilian inmate labor camp regulation signed Dec. 9, 1997, under the Clinton administration.
Ned Christensen, spokesman for the U.S. Army Installation Management Command, confirmed to WND the 2005 version of Army Regulation 210-35 is currently valid and fully operative. The regulation specifies "the Army's primary purpose for allowing establishment of prison camps on Army installations is to use the resident nonviolent civilian inmate labor pool to work on the leased portions of the installation."
The regulations specify Army personnel running the prison camps will prepare an "Inmate Labor Plan" that will comply with 18 U.S.C. 4125(a), governing civilian inmate labor.
That section of the U.S. Code allows the U.S. attorney general to make available to the heads of U.S. departments, including the Army, the services of U.S. prisoners to engage in labor, including "constructing or repairing roads, cleaning, 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 regulation currently limits the Army's Civilian Inmate Labor Program "to using inmates from facilities under the control of the Federal Bureau of Prisons," noting the bureau "provides civilian inmate labor free of charge to the Army."
The regulation specifies that a benefit of the program to the Army is "providing a source of labor at no direct cost to Army installations to accomplish tasks that would not be possible otherwise due to the manning and funding constraints under which the Army operates."
