California Code, Penal Code - PEN § 4125.1

The board of supervisors may contract with the United States or the State of California, or any department or agency thereof, for the performance of work and labor by any person in custody on any county industrial farm or industrial road camp or confined in the county jail or branch thereof under a final judgment of imprisonment rendered in a criminal action or proceeding or as a condition of probation in the suppression of fires within and upon the national forests, state parks, or other lands of the United States or the State of California, or within and upon such other lands, of whatever ownership, contiguous to, or adjacent to said state or federal lands, the suppression of fires upon which other lands affords fire protection to said state or federal lands.  Such payments as may be so contracted for and to be paid by the United States or by the State of California for the work and labor so performed by any person so in custody may, by order of the board of supervisors, be credited in full or in part, and upon such terms and conditions as the board shall determine, to any such person so in custody and performing such work and labor, and all in addition to those credits hereinbefore provided in Section 4125 of this code.

Whenever any such person so in custody shall perform the services herein specified he shall be subject to workmen's compensation benefits to the same extent as a county employee, and the board of supervisors shall provide and cover any such person so in custody, while performing such services, with accident, death and compensation insurance as is otherwise regularly provided for employees of the county.

The term “suppression of fires” as herein used shall include the construction of firebreaks and other works of improvement for the prevention and suppression of fire whether or not constructed in the actual course of suppression of existing fires.