Did you know inmates can have pen pals?
Did you know they could submit personals?
Did you know there are websites for those inmates to meet people and form lasting relationships?
Firstly, I was a bit surprised to see that there’s a site you can use to search for the location of an inmate. Several State Department of Corrections makes available information and photographs of inmates who are incarcerated. I’m not shocked there. The Smoking Gun has made use of that for years.
But to see the following as a banner is highly disconcerting:
Some sites offer reviews of online prison personal ad and pen pal services so that you can find an inmate you’d like to meet on the outside. Others give or sell you their addresses (sell the women’s addresses), and list people by sexual preference. One pitch is as follows.
These male inmates are behind bars, paying a price for crimes they have committed. Just think how lonely it must feel at mail call to never hear your name. They will get excited when their name is called to receive a letter, especially after being locked up for several years and family and friends have deserted them. All of these prisoners have written us a letter requesting to be listed. Some are just wanting a pen pal while some singles are looking for the possibility of a more serious relationship.
There’s also another site entirely dedicated to sending letters to Native Americans in prison.
What I learned was that inmates do not have access to a computer or the Internet, all correspondence is through the U.S. Mail and websites that offer to let you email inmates actually print up your emails and send them over once a week, so you have to include your snail mail if you want a reply.
So then I thought about it. CSI had an episode where an inmate works as phone support for a clothing company.
So I checked out Nevada’s Department of Corrections (and the fact that they have a list of people who’ve escaped/walked away distresses me). Nevada has this thing called Silver State Industries which is a self-supporting prison industry problem. But that doesn’t touch on the salesman aspect. I know it’s being done, but where?
More legwork tells us that inmates in Nevada who make a product for use in the prison system make around $1.10/hour. If they make a product for use outside, they get Nevada minimum wage ($5.15). About 35 percent of inmates’ wages are deducted and paid to the state and split three ways: 24.5 percent for room and board, 5 percent to a general fund that victims of crimes can apply to for financial assistance and 5 percent for capital improvements to the prison industry program. If an inmate owes restitution to a victim of his or her crime, that’s also taken out.
Tennessee inmates produce jeans for Kmart and JC Penney and wooden rocking ponies for trendy Eddie Bauer (list price $80). Some states produce toys, and many produce mattresses. Until last year, 150 Ohio inmates made car parts for Honda. Oregon inmates make uniforms for McDonald’s. In Nevada, inmates convert luxury cars into stretch limousines. And nearly all of the programs produce furniture, the largest component of prison industries nationwide.
Inmates also book rooms for motel chains and take reservations for Trans World Airlines (yes, they do take credit card numbers–and yes, there have been embarrassing incidents). In Kansas, they process Social Security numbers. In Iowa, they work for the Department of Tourism’s Information Bureau, boosting the same state that locked them away. A number of states, among them Iowa and Nebraska, rent their inmates out as telemarketers.
Not one seems to permit cons to use computers.
Anyway, short story is that the con on CSI wouldn’t have been able to email her at all while he was in prison. And yes, he may have had a computer at ‘work’, but it probably had a direct connection to the vendor, or a tight firewall preventing him from going anywhere else.