Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) a low-security Federal penitentiary, usu. for white-collar prisoners and offering them many privileges; also attrib.

1977		Crawdaddy 38: Club Fed! Camp Elgin is the Federal Minimum Security Prison where Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt served his sentence. A convicted dope dealer describes serving a sentence there .
1985		US News & World Report 99 43: [He was] recently freed from a US prison camp at Big Spring, Tex., that critics dub ’Club Fed’ .
1997		T. Fontana ‘God's Chillin’ Oz ser. 1 ep. 3 [TV script] They decided to make an example of me so they sent me here instead of some cushy Club Med.
1999		Alberta Report Online 12 July 🌐 Now they are studying the possibility of paying all prisoners [...] with heroin and other illegal drugs so as to reduce crime and disease. ‘This is going way too far. No wonder offenders call Canadian jails Club Fed,’ says Randy White, the Reform deputy critic for justice.
2002		Canada NewsWire 12 Feb. 🌐 The nation-wide petition we are launching today is a wake up call for the government to bring an end to the Club Fed culture of Corrections Canada. It is time to instil meaningful consequences for offenders, reinforce public safety, and instil public confidence in our criminal justice system.
2012		B.K. Payne White-Collar Crime [ebook] The moniker ‘Club Fed’ is used to describe the supposed clublike atmosphere surrounding the prisons where white-collar inmates are often incarcerated. There are no bars, no fences, and no prison cells.
2019		D. Winslow Border [ebook] I’m not interested in sending a few patsies to Club Fed for a few years.