Looking for Love? Watch out for Bogeymen....

It never ceases to amaze; the penchant of women to look for love everlasting in the most unlikely of places. What is there about psychopaths, about social deviants, about those who eschew society's values to such a degree that they commit to vicious acts of social derangement, landing in federal prisons for prolonged stays to prevent them from further violations of humane standards of behaviour, that makes them so attractive to women?

Why is it that serial killers have been able to attract the attention of women outside prison walls, to bring them into prison walls where they meet, make contact and 'fall in lust', and marry? What is wrong with these women? Are they just simply so compassionate that they cannot imagine incarcerating someone for heinous crimes, preferring to believe that an injustice has been committed and their love for the incarcerant will triumph and he will become good and decent and all will live happily ever after?

Well, it appears that one woman, of whom evidently it cannot be said she takes advantage of personal contact herself, was sufficiently moved by the thought of men held in prison, isolated from the softening effects of female companionship, lonely and deprived, to begin a prison dating online site that might attract people to one another. Men on the inside pining for female communication and women on the outside imagining how fulfilling it would be to find companionship inside a prison cell.

Canadian Inmates Connect is what the site is called, it's been on the web for almost a year and a half, and represents about forty inmates' personal stories. Many of those individual convict profiles represent people serving life sentences. The website is there primarily for the objective of seeking out pen pals. And since prisoners do not have access to computers, communication is by old-fashioned post.

Which is not a bad thing; it does have a certain distance to it.

The website does caution those interested that they should be alert to the possibility that no good may come of their participation in partnering with someone in prison. Still, the Toronto woman who initiated the website is convinced she is doing something useful for society. "I'm making a difference, for sure -- and that's become most important to me. It doesn't matter what they've done. It's not for me to judge.... I'm just a firm believer in redemption and rehabilitation.... I believe everybody deserves a second chance."

While warning people that they should be prepared to proceed with caution. The profiles as they are presented are the work of the convicts themselves. Nothing necessarily prompts them to tell the unvarnished truth about themselves. Canadian Inmates Connect cautions it's not responsible for any kind of relationship that may result from using its web pages as a conduit into some prisoner's life and whatever may come of that primary 'introduction'.

The Correctional Service of Canada has no comment on the presence and purpose of "an external site". "The safety of public, staff and inmates remains paramount" responded a spokesperson when asked to comment. One of the prisoners who has taken advantage of the site to make contact with a woman who has appealed to him and with whom he now has a prospective partner when he is finally released, utters his own caution:

"You're writing a federal inmate -- it's a dangerous thing.... These guys are the real deal. There are bogeymen in here."