Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the new cellblock communications are prison personal ads, some of which have led to wedding vows. While inmate penpals are nothing new, the advent of Web sites featuring pictures and glowing come-ons riles victims' advocates. I don't necessarily think this is a First Amendment issue. Inmate advocates say prisoners do have a free speech right to communicate via Internet. Beyond that, they argue, its counterproductive to keep prisoners cut off from a world to which many will return.
Prison is the punishment.
Sparks, who began Penn-Pals as a result of his own correspondence with a friend in prison, said he runs the site because he believes there are decent people behind bars and wants to serve as an antidote to what he views as an increasingly hostile attitude on the part of society toward prison inmates. In California, which has the nation's largest prison system, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Margot Bach says officials cant ban prisoners from communicating, although guards censor the mail and monitor inmate bank accounts for signs that someone has fallen for a scam. Marc Klaas doesn't want to share the Web with his daughter's killer. Also writing from San Quentin is Jarvis Masters, who was sent to the regular prison population there for armed robbery in 1981. He was sentenced to death after being convicted in the 1985 killing of a guard.