The photographs on the social media site iexpress are small and old, unliked and unshared. Tony Grosser's shows him half-smiling on the steps of a courthouse. His handcuffed-wrists have been cropped out. The profile picture sits above a recount of the 1994 siege in which he killed a South Australian police officer, titled "From rapid fire gunman to Pastor in prison".
As a user of one of the world's first digital platforms for prisoners, Grosser is at the centre of a debate: should Australian jails should be online or offline? Opponents say iexpress (nicknamed "Facebook for Felons") insults victims and threatens prisoners' rehabilitation. But experts argue inmates are a greater risk if kept in a "pre-internet dark age" without the skills or support to rejoin society.
"One does not feel quite so isolated, lost, sad," Grosser tells Fairfax Media. "This service will help stop suicide in prisons, plus assist correctional officers by having happier inmates, so less violence in prison." He says the site has helped him find legal advice and contact his family.
"Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same," writes another inmate, Chris Bentley, quoting the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault.
In the early 2000s, Bentley raped two girls, aged 16 and 17, one at knife-point. Now the West Australian uses his account to advocate for prison reform. "I have had enough of the ignorance in the world and am doing everything to change things," he says.
Blue Mountains man John McCann posts pencil sketches from Silverwater jail in Sydney, where he is serving time for killing his former lodger in what a judge called a "particularly brutal" act of self-defence. "What I like about the site is my friends and family can easily see what I am working on and even send an email to me," McCann says.
Iexpress gives prisoners a voice online but not direct access to the internet. Users (literally) post content by sending letters to the prison rights group Justice Action, in Goulburn Street in Sydney. Justice Action volunteers create profile pages from the letters and act as a mail service between prisoners and the outside world, sending print-outs to jails so users can track their online presences.
"This is technology that allows a freedom to develop," says Brett Collins, the former bank robber who founded the site. "It paves the way for the offender to return to the community and by that time resolve their feelings, to state their feelings about what they did."
Not all users take up the opportunity. Some pages are little more than screeds. (Malcolm Baker devotes hundreds of words to the "100% putrid scam" which is climate change.) Others are as brief as personal ads. (Ian Wright is a 190cm tall medium-build Gemini who likes camping, bushwalking, riding, darts, honesty, music, and weekends out.)
But many users report feelings of contrition, new attitudes and hopes for further change.
"What in me is dark, illumine," writes Steve Dunne, quoting the poet John Milton.
The launch of iexpress has come at a "cross-over point" for prisons, according to University of Sydney criminologist Garner Clancey. While the internet has suffused almost all aspects of everyday life, only one Australian prison, the Alexander Maconochie Centre in the ACT, allows direct access to the internet. Iexpress users show how anachronistic prison is when they refer to Walkman privileges or describe radios as "portals".
"Limited communication just causes mental anguish," Clancey says. He worries that without the right technology and supervision, prisoners could use the internet to intimidate witnesses, bribe prison staff or organise drug drops. But he says prisoners would benefit greatly from more access to education and employment resources, as well as contact with friends and family.
Prisoners in Scandinavia have had the internet for years and several US states are considering trials.
Australia is falling behind, according to Helen Farley, an associate professor of education at the University of Southern Queensland.
"We need to empower prisoners to be able to imagine alternative futures for themselves and for their families," Dr Farley says. "If the gap [between prison and society] is too big, they are going to get out and not be able to cope."
In February, human rights group Liberty Victoria told the state's ombudsman that a lack of internet would increase offending by reducing prisoners' employment options. Britain's chief prison inspector, Nick Hardwick, has criticised the "pre-internet dark age" of jails.
"We can't leave prisons in a time warp and prisoners woefully unprepared for the world they will re-enter," Hardwick said.
Iexpress will not be threatening Facebook any time soon. In more than a year, only 47 prisoners have signed up for iexpress. (One of the few similar websites, the US-based Live from Lockdown, has only 35 prisoners signed up.) But Collins, the site founder, says the volume of correspondence has grown quickly in spite of a "severe penal headspace".
The NSW Department of Corrective Services has committed to a trial of computers in cells but with no internet access. At the same time, the department is considering mobile-phone blocking technology. It would like to shut down iexpress but has received legal advice it cannot.
"Corrective Services NSW does not support the website iexpress and has raised concerns with Justice Action about its potential impact on victims and others," a spokesman said.
That concern is shared by the NSW Commissioner of Victims' Rights, Mahashini Krishna. "I know some victims and families bereaved by violent crime and homicide are appalled offenders can have their pleas for pen pals, compassion or other posted for them online by a third party," she says.
Another argument against the site is that it gives offenders the chance to publicly deny culpability for their crimes. "Forums that allow these inaccurate accounts and self-reflections have a real risk potential to increase risk," South Australian prisons chief David Brown told iexpress.
Several offenders spoke of wrongful conviction when asked to respond to the arguments against iexpress. "Sometimes we are innocent, victims of an unfair system," says Gary Allen Playford, who is serving a life sentence in Queensland for his role in a 2009 double murder.
Playford blames "corrupt" cops and says he was acting in self-defence. He describes his offending as "an alteration [sic] with 3 people which resulted in 2 of them dying." Perhaps the most notorious user of iexpress, Hoddle Street gunman Julian Knight, claims on his page that "military bastardisation" led him to kill seven people on a Melbourne street in 1987.
But the prisoners who wrote to Fairfax Media reject the idea they are insulting victims or interfering with their own rehabilitation.
"Would it not honour the victims to know that we are fighting to better ourselves as human beings?" Bentley asks. "If the victims are still vengful [sic] would it not be a satisfaction for them to see an acknowledgment of suffering?"
John McCann says "anything to break down barriers between people is a good thing."
"The website shows the general public the COMMON HUMANITY of inmates," he stresses. "In time it could lead to a more human [sic] prison system eventually!!"
