Inmates' personal ads doing time on Internet; 
Web site s draw pen pals, anger victims' families 



Chicago Tribune;
	Chicago, Ill.;
	Jul 28, 2002;
	Lynette Kalsnes, Tribune staff reporter;

(Copyright 2002 by the Chicago Tribune)

In his Internet personal ad, Luther Casteel lounges in a well- cut suit 
and stares out seductively while expressing a love for slow dancing, 
jazz and hiking with his dogs.  He is a spiritual person, he says, who 
likes fine cars, clothing and the Chicago nightlife. And incidentally,
he was convicted of murder and makes his home on Death Row.

"The state says I'm a `Natural Born Killer,' but I am a very compassionate 
man and a born-again Christian!" his ad says.
Casteel, 45, convicted of killing two people and wounding 16 others in a 
shooting at an Elgin pub in April 2001, is one of thousands of convicts, 
from petty criminals to some of the region's notorious killers, who have 
placed ads seeking correspondents, legal help and long-term relationships 
on a quickly growing list of prison pen pal Web sites.

The quest for prison pen pals is not new--for years, prisoners have sought 
them through newspaper and magazine ads. But "the Internet seems to have 
replaced that," said Gary Phelps, chief of staff for the Arizona 
Department of Corrections. "It's quicker, cheaper, you get a much broader 
market.... It's harder to control."

The trend has infuriated victims' rights organizations and victims' 
families, who are concerned the sites could lead to scams or influence 
impressionable young people to commit similar crimes.

Victims' relatives also are incensed at the idea that murderers and 
rapists, whose punishment is supposed to include their isolation from 
society, are entitled to any kind of pleasant interaction with the 
outside world.

Robert Weides, the father of the bartender Casteel killed, sees the ads as 
an "absolute outrage." To imagine this man has any rights is just 
unconscionable," he said. "When you did what he did, you lost your right 
to be a human being."
But Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Fairchild said such 
sites are legal and the prisons can do little beyond monitoring mail and 
calls, because prisoners have a right to correspondence.

Prison reform groups argue the sites can shine light on prison abuses 
while socializing inmates, making them feel more connected to the 
outside world and less likely to re-offend.

Internet pen-pal sites are growing rapidly in number and membership. 
Cyberspace Inmates lists 1,625 inmates and gets 5,000 to 10,000 hits a 
week, while PrisonPennPals.com has 1,006 inmates and averages 2,600 
hits a day, according to the founders. The people writing include 
homemakers, oil riggers, students and police.

Prisoners do not have Internet access, Fairchild said.
Instead, they mail information to Web sites to develop the ads, which 
often include protestations of innocence alongside paintings, poems 
and photos of prisoners taken in better days, or in the visiting room 
while subtly flexing their muscles.

Inmates primarily learn about the sites from other prisoners, though 
family members also can provide information. Many sites have applications 
that family and friends can send to an inmate to fill in the necessary 
details.

As for what the inmates write, PrisonPennPals.com founder Stephen Hartley 
said his site corrects grammatical errors and edits out profanities or 
sexually explicit material. Beyond that, he said, the material runs as the 
inmates provide it.

People generally can write letters directly to inmates or via the Web 
site, which would mail the messages to the prisons.
Some human-rights sites, such as the Canadian Coalition Against the 
Death Penalty, cost nothing. More commercially oriented sites charge 
inmates up to $80 a year, or charge the people who wish to write to 
prisoners a fee for each message.

Among the extras available to prisoners, one site will digitally alter 
dank visiting-room photos into fantasy vacations, showing inmates in 
resorts they have never visited or on cruises they have never taken.

Kept from `going insane'

Such idyllic spots are a far cry from the cell where Jesus Padilla Jr., 28, 
of Cicero, is locked up for 23 hours a day. An inmate at the Downstate 
Tamms super-maximum-security prison, Padilla was sentenced to 60 years 
after strangling an Oak Park woman, hiding her body in a shed and reportedly 
bragging about it.

The lack of human contact spurred him to place an ad on an Internet Web 
site, where he averaged nine hits a day.  "The Web site would provide a 
means for me to be able to have people from outside write to me and keep 
me from going insane in this place," Padilla said in a letter. "It is not 
every day that one can smile in a place such as this, but when you see 
the smiles radiating from a prisoner when he receives a letter from a 
friend you will grasp the profound meaning behind the contact we have made.

Padilla, whose ad says he is an animal lover and an American Indian who 
upholds the ways of his ancestors, said he has corresponded with a teacher, 
another professional and a business owner. They write him out of curiosity 
about prisoners' lives or "just out of the kindness of their hearts," he 
said.

Though the medium has changed from pen and paper to cyberspace, the 
controversy over such communications remains the same, said professor 
Ned Benton, who heads the public management department at the City 
University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
"As always in corrections, you're balancing questions of security and 
public safety, and questions of individual freedom," he said.

Susanna Orr, Jeffrey Weides' mother, called for a ban on third-party 
communication. Her son, who had two children, was considering going into 
the landscaping business before Casteel's bullets ended the dream.
"I don't think [Casteel] should have any contact with people he can be 
an influence on," Orr said

New York and Arizona prohibit third-party mail and Internet access. But 
even with penalties including a loss of good-time credits, inmate Web 
pages in Arizona recently topped 150, Phelps said.

Arizona's law, which human rights groups challenged in court this month 
as a violation of free speech, was created after a woman searching for 
information about her late father discovered his killer's Internet ad 
instead, Phelps said.

"My concern is public safety," Phelps said. "I think these inmates are 
continuing to fleece the public, putting the money into accounts that 
someone else manages, and we have no idea.

But, proponents argue that prisoners have rights and need contact with 
the outside world.  Some of the sites document prison abuses and bring 
legal help to the innocent, said Tracy Lamourie, a co-founder of the 
Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty. She hopes the Web will 
help end the death penalty by showing the human face of those sentenced 
to die.

Engaged to a prisoner, Texan Laura Rawls, who writes inmates in several 
states, including Illinois, said inmates lose everything, even their 
families, as the years pass. "I saw there was so much pain behind those 
walls," said Rawls, who runs a prison ministry. "I wanted to do what I 
could to help, to let them know they're not alone. Society kind of shuns 
these guys. That's one of the main reasons they can't make it in this 
world."  Rawls is engaged to an inmate pen pal. She said she hasn't 
received much support from the outside world."They think you're stupid 
for writing to inmates," she said.

Though Rawls acknowledged the need to be cautious, she said she does not 
worry about writing inmates or her plans to marry one. "I believe 
everybody has the right to a second chance." 

"Most of the guys ... they're going to get out," said Cyberspace Inmates 
founder Rev. Rene Mulkey. "I would much prefer someone who's been 
rehabilitated, who has taken college courses, who has written with people 
and interacted as my neighbor, than someone who has spent time in a cage."