Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine highlights prison inmates with their own blogs, including:

- A convicted felon in New York;
- A Maricopa County (Az.) Jail inmate;
- And Vernon Lee Evans, a Maryland death row inmate who blogs at Meet Vernon.

TalkLeft’s Jeralyn Merritt enthuses:

Meet Vernon even has a blogroll, and TalkLeft is proud to be included on it. This is an experiment, but wouldn’t it be great to see every death row inmate with a blog?

No, it wouldn’t. I don’t think it would be “great” for Satanic serial killer Richard Ramirez or convicted murderer Scott Peterson to be allowed to blog about their breakfasts and their workouts and their appeals and their sick fantasies and their online girlfriends.

I don’t think it would be “great” to see convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal blogging about his favorite razors and digital cameras and what’s playing on his iPod.

I don’t think it would be “great” for prison officials to allow these Death Row convicts to flaunt their lives on the Internet while the relatives of those they brutally murdered suffer.

At least one convicted murderer has already used his access to the Web to taunt his victim’s family and mock his crime. “Great!”

I thought the 1995 Zimmer amendment, which banned prison luxuries and has withstood constitutional challenges, was supposed to stop this nonsense. Maybe it’s time for someone in Congress to update the law.

If not, what’s next? The Menendez brothers sharing photos on Flickr? Charles Manson podcasts? A convicted al Qaeda terrorists’ group blog from Supermax?

“Free speech?” Spare me.