By Dessa Bayrock (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: June 5, 2013
When I first heard about Canadian Inmates Connect, I thought it was lovely idea. It functions largely as a dating site for the incarcerated, putting them in touch with women who become pen pals, wives and soul mates. Sure, I thought. Doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance at love?
And through this site, managed by a volunteer civilian who believes firmly in both love and second chances, inmates are given that chance.
It’s a wonderful sentiment. After all, who doesn’t have mistakes in their past that they’re trying to move beyond? Inmates just have—shall we say—larger mistakes than most.
An inmate seems like an excellent candidate for a pen pal, so it was with an eager heart that I perused the listings on Canadian Inmates Connect. I knew exactly what would happen: one of the 250-word-long self-descriptions would stand out to me, and I would send off a letter to some bank robber, and we would become fast friends.
But before I even reached the descriptions, I started having serious doubts.
Like most dating sites, Inmate Connections lists the bachelor’s name, age and location. Unlike other dating sites, it also lists the charges that put the bachelor in jail, as well as how long they’re expected to be there.
One woman, who found her boyfriend through the site, says dating an inmate is a simple equation: with other men, you might not know what dirty or dangerous secrets they’re hiding behind a nice façade. If you enter a relationship with an inmate, however, you know exactly what you’re getting into.
This seemed pretty logical, until I remembered that this means entering into a relationship with a convicted killer or drug dealer. Many of the inmates described themselves as changed men, but their thug poses said otherwise.
Most murders are committed by someone the victim knows – so why would you willingly put yourself in a position where you are on a first-name basis with a murderer?
By the time I reached page three of inmate lonely hearts, I decided to leave the inmate pen pal-ing to others. I absolutely believe that even convicts deserve compassion and friendship, and I’m sure that many of them are good people. But it’s impossible to tell who someone is by reading words on a page, and I’m not willing to take the chance of picking a faker.
