Blogging Behind Bars

Death row convicts are finding a way to have a bit of freedom. Blogging is providing them with a virtual escape from their confines.

From the Los Angeles Times:

From the forbidding, steely confines of San Quentin Prison's death row, scores of California's most notorious convicts have been reaching out to the free world via the Internet.

...Prisoners are barred from direct computer access that officials say could allow them to threaten witnesses or orchestrate crimes. Thanks to supporters and commercial services, however, many of the state's 673 condemned inmates now have pen-pal postings and personalized Web pages with their writings, artwork and photos of themselves -- often accompanied by declarations of innocence and pleas for friendship and funds.

Although some inmates utilize sites in the U.S., the nonprofit Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty has created Web pages or pen-pal ads for more than 100 California death row inmates. The site, unlike some others, is free.

Prisoners' mail privileges "make it virtually impossible to stop stuff from going out . . ." said Lt. Eric Messick, litigation coordinator at San Quentin. "That is how things get posted."

Since the mid-1990s, when a condemned inmate's column called "Deadman Talkin' " appeared online, use of the Internet by prisoners has proliferated in California and elsewhere.

While civil libertarians applaud the development as the exercise of free speech by isolated people, victims' rights activists decry it as an unnecessary affront to the loved ones of those whose suffering led society to lock up these prisoners.

"It's hurtful," said Christine Ward, director of the Crime Victims Action Alliance. "They are seeing a [convicted] person going on with their life, but the person they raised or married or knew does not get that opportunity. . . . That murdered person is not coming back."

Elizabeth Alexander, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, said survivors simply should steer clear of websites that would be painful to see. "It does not seem that you can design a limit on the 1st Amendment based on an expectation that victims will seek out something that gives them more pain," she said.

After the widow of an Arizona murder victim became outraged by the killer's online personals ad, that state's legislators passed a law banning inmates from the Internet even through outside contacts. In 2003, a judge declared it unconstitutional.

Prisoners' rights so often trump the rights of victims.

Convicts don't need "direct computer access that officials say could allow them to threaten witnesses or orchestrate crimes" to do damage while they're incarcerated. Their websites alone can be a form of harassment of the victims.

Having "personalized Web pages with their writings, artwork and photos of themselves -- often accompanied by declarations of innocence and pleas for friendship and funds" seems to go well beyond prisoners' mail privileges as they were before the Internet.

It's true that the loved ones of prisoners' victims can just avoid going to the offensive websites, but that doesn't mean that it's appropriate for the sites to exist. I think there should be some limits on the degree of communication certain prisoners have.

The Internet allows them to speak to the entire world. Should a convicted person have that sort of forum?

Prisoners may not have direct computer access but these sites give them a direct line of communication to virtually everyone via the Internet.