The idea of seeking romance with an inmate is seen as somewhat outlandish by many people. However, there are benefits that can be overlooked. A prisoner will often appreciate your efforts to make contact more than the average person. As such, it can often be easier to make a deep personal connection on prison dating sites, even if they’re not free to meet you in the real world.
Your support and loyalty can go a long way during this time and create deep relationships that extend well beyond their release date.
The idea of trying to love a prisoner isn’t as rare as you might think. Several inmate dating sites have emerged to facilitate these connections. In this guide, you’ll discover the best prison dating sites available in 2024.
What Are the Best Dating Sites for Inmates in 2024?
The best inmate dating site is Meet An Inmate. It’s been around for more than two decades and works to give inmates pen pals outside of prison.
Let’s Take a Look at 12 Prison Dating Sites and Apps
Below, you’ll find a short review of 12 inmate dating sites. These reviews will reveal how these websites work and how easy they make it to love a prisoner:
- Meet An Inmate
- Adult Friend Finder
- Inmate Mingle
- Love A Prisoner
- Write A Prisoner
- Inmate Passions
- Inmate Classified
- Friends Beyond The Wall
- Women Behind Bars
- Prison Inmates
- Canadian Inmates Connect
- Match.com
Meet An Inmate
Meet An Inmate is one of the longest-running and most well-known free inmate dating sites, having launched all the way back in the early 2000s.
This website is packed with a huge choice of male and female inmates - and it makes it incredibly simple to send them a message.
It’s as simple as clicking a link on the home page for “lady inmates” or “male inmates”. This will open a page of either female or male profiles with each prisoner’s first name, age, and state written below it.
You can click on the photo to open the full profile and read the bio. It includes a short About Me section, where the prisoner typically explains who they’d like to hear from and what sort of relationship they’re looking for.
They also list useful details such as date of birth, height, education, occupation before prison, earliest and latest release date, and what activities they enjoy in prison. The profile will include their postal address and instructions on how to email them. The profile also includes links to their state’s official website for searching through inmate data.
This website is available through meet-an-inmate.com, although its sister website jailbabes.com would appear to have the same female profiles.
The website claims to have more visitors than any other prison dating website. It encourages users to send messages to several inmates until they find their favorite. That’s how people behave on other traditional dating apps, so why not?
The inmates have to pay $35 a year to be featured on this website, but it would appear as if many are happy to make this investment.
Adult Friend Finder
Adult Friend Finder isn’t necessarily an inmate dating app. It’s the world’s most popular hook-up website, with tens of millions of users around the world.
Most people use Adult Friend Finder to find people to enjoy casual sex with in the real world, but many more use it to get their kicks online.
You can easily enjoy steamy chats in the DMs, or post and consume sexual content. There’s a huge ‘live cam’ section on this website as well. Many incarcerated individuals gravitate to this website for these reasons.
AFF has a powerful search function for you to seek out people by their gender, location, physical features, kinks, and fetishes. Most members go into great detail about their personal (and sexual) situation in their bios. So, it should be easy enough to find inmates if that’s what you’re looking for.
It’s easy to find whatever gets you off on Adult Friend Finder, either digitally or in the real world. It’s currently running a free trial, so there has never been a better time to see what this website is all about.
Inmate Mingle
You won’t create a profile on Inmate Mingle either. Once you agree to the terms of use, you’ll use a search function to find an inmate to connect with. You can search by age, location (U.S. states only), race, crime, and release year. Your desired age can be toggled between 1 and 100, but we’ll assume that’s a technical error. There are only adults listed on this website, of course.
Each prisoner’s profile includes instructions for how to get in contact with them by post or email. Sadly though, only 14 female profiles were on this website when we tested it. Inmate Mingle is free to use, and there are more male profiles to choose from, but this is far from the most popular inmate dating app available to you.
Love A Prisoner
Love A Prisoner is another of the more popular free prison dating sites. Its simplicity and large selection of prisoners are two of its strong points.
Also, you can choose to write your message digitally on loveaprisoner.com and have it delivered to the prisoner via snail mail. This feature could be especially useful for those who want to contact an inmate who doesn’t have e-mail access but would like to keep their own address private. In this case, users can read a history of the messages they sent and received in their Love A Prisoner inbox. To access this feature, you’ll need to create an account on the website.
There is a detailed search system on LoveAPrisoner.com that allows you to filter your selection of inmates by gender, U.S. state, race, and the type of prison they’re in (federal or state). However, it could be argued that there aren’t enough prisoners on this website for this feature to be necessary.
Love A Prisoner prides itself on its mobile-friendly website, which is admittedly very easy to use. There are forums where you can engage in conversations about prison relationships. The website also includes information about prison laws and the criminal justice system, which many users may find useful. It would appear to be blocked to everyone outside the United States though.
Write A Prisoner
You don’t need to create a profile to find your perfect prison romance on Write A Prisoner. Simply navigate to writeaprisoner.com and search for someone you’d like to connect with. You can filter your search by gender, race, state, and sexual orientation. You’ll find plenty of prisoners to choose from unless your search is oddly specific.
You can click the photo to see their bio. Most prisoners write a fair amount about themselves on this website. You’ll also find a wealth of useful information including their date of birth, latest release date, and how to email them. Write A Prisoner also includes links to databases if you want to learn more about this person’s crime.
Unlike most of the websites on our list, some of the prisoners listed here are based outside the United States.
The website may be called Write A Prisoner, but it’s so much more than that. There’s a forum where you can discuss all topics surrounding prison relationships. You can also find a wealth of reintegration information that prisoners and their partners may find useful. The topics include counseling, education, employment, and legal information.
Apps Dating Experts Recommend to Men
Whether it's your first real relationship or you have a string in your past there are a few apps that dating experts recommend consistently. These are apps where you can meet great girls who want something long-term as well as those just looking to keep it casual:
| Site | Our Experience | Our Rating | Free Trial Link |
|---|---|---|---|
Best For Relationships  | Experience Highlights
| 9 | Try eHarmony |
Best For Casual Fun  | Experience Highlights
| 9 | Try AFF For Free |
Great If You're Handsome  | Tinder Highlights
| 8 | Try Tinder |
Inmate Passions
Inmate Passions can be considered more of a traditional dating app since you’ll need to create a profile and search for people to message you. Those with an interest in prison love are also able to message each other on Inmate Passions, so it may also be that some people message you first if you sign up.
The profiles on this website are very detailed and you’ll be forced to fill out a fair amount of personal details before completing your registration. Most of the websites on this list don’t require registration, but the sign-up process here will take you a few minutes. This is a good thing in many ways, as it filters out those who aren’t serious about finding love online.
A unique concept of this website is the groups. There are 22 groups you can join based on your interests surrounding prison dating. These groups include “Seeking Prison Penpal, “Under House Arrest” and “Guilty, Just Kidding.” You’ll also see which groups members are part of in the search results, and this can give you a bigger clue about their personality. You can choose to search for people who are in the same group as you.
There are hundreds of niche dating websites in the Passions network. They all look like they were designed in 1998 and haven’t been updated since. Still, there are people using this website and it’s completely free to do so.
There’s nothing stopping you from sending messages to someone else who is seeking a prison pen pal. Maybe you’ll hit it off with each other instead of both waiting for someone to be set free.
Inmate Classified
Inmate Classified may be the oldest website on this list, having launched in 1996. It’s one of the most basic in terms of design and function. Navigate to inmate.com and you’ll see a list of mugshots on the home page. Click one to see the prisoner’s profile. You’ll find an ‘About Me’ section and various details including their date of birth, crime, and release date.
This website makes it super-easy to get in touch with your choice of criminal. It includes their postal address, but there’s also a ‘Click Here’ button to send them a message.
Take the latter option and your message will be printed and mailed to them, courtesy of Inmate Classified. Supposedly, all messages are sent on Fridays. The recipient can respond to you directly (if you leave them contact details) or they can write back to the website’s postal address, so the staff can scan the message and email it to you. This makes Inmate Classified a great option for those who want to keep their address safe.
This is available at inmate.com. Sadly, there are only two female profiles right now; one in Florida and one in Minnesota. That’s a bummer if you’re only interested in dating female inmates. But who knows? Perhaps Inmate Classified will become more popular with the ladies in time. The Inmate Locator service can help you find prisoners who haven’t created a profile on this website.
Friends Beyond The Wall
Friends Beyond The Wall is another one of the well-established free inmate dating sites, having launched in 1999. It’s also short of female prisoners to connect with. There are just 75 female profiles in the United States ( I found 5 in Florida, 1 in California, and 0 in New York).
The bios aren’t as detailed as some other inmate dating sites either. They don’t include information about the member’s crime, although you’ll discover their release date and other demographic information.
Still, the website sets up connections very efficiently. The ‘Advanced Search’ feature is incredibly detailed. You can filter your searches by race, location, and sexual orientation, plus you can also search for people on death row or those who haven’t had any correspondence yet.
Once you’ve found someone you’d like to contact, the website helps you set up your opening message as an email, which will be printed and posted to the recipient with your contact details included in it. Mails are forwarded three times per week.
There are rules you’ll need to follow. Users are limited to 10 messages per week - and each mail needs to be unique. The only messages accepted are those of an introductory nature. All subsequent letters must be sent by general mail.
Women Behind Bars
Women Behind Bars focuses on female prisoners, and there are hundreds to choose from.
It’s not as easy to find your perfect prison match though, as there is no search function on the website.
Instead, you’ll need to search manually using Women Behind Bars’ categories.
These are:
- 20-29 Black Female Prison Pen Pals
- 30-39 Black Female Prison Pen Pals
- 40+ Black Female Prison Pen Pals
- 20-29 Hispanic Female Prison Pen Pals
- 30-39 Hispanic Female Prison Pen Pals
- 40+ Hispanic Female Prison Pen Pals
- 20-29 White Female Prison Pen Pals
- 30-39 White Female Prison Pen Pals
- 40+ White Female Prison Pen Pals
If you want to search for someone in your home state, you’ll have to do so manually. The bios are somewhat detailed. They include information on whether the woman has children, their height, and weight. Most websites don’t add this.
You’ll also find basic demographic information such as hair color, eye color, sexuality, and location, as well as their latest release date. There’s no information on their crime though.
Women Behind Bars is not a free website. You’ll have to pay $4 to reveal an inmate’s address.
Prison Inmates
When you navigate to PrisonInmates.com, it would appear to be one of the more popular free inmate dating sites.
On its home page at prisoninmates.com, it boasts of having over 1,000 profiles and 200,000,000 page views.
By clicking the ‘Write to an Inmate’ button, you’ll see a complicated main dashboard with a ton of categories to help you find someone to write to. These include male, female, by state, gay, lesbian, bisexual, needs mail, serving life and death row. You’ll also see a news feed of the most recent updates by Prison Inmates members.
The profiles are among the most detailed that I’ve seen on a prison dating website. You can discover basic demographic details about the prisoner, what their crime was, and their latest release date. Prisoners are also prompted to reveal trivial facts about themselves including their favorite food, TV show, movie, music, and quotes. I found one woman whose favorite quote was “I will because I want to.” She was imprisoned for robbery. All profiles include links and information for you to send an email or a snail mail.
Many inmates choose to upload several photos, as the website allows for this too and it’ll appear on the main news feed for new visitors when they do. Sadly, a big weakness of this website is that it currently only has six female prisoners to write to.
Canadian Inmates Connect
This is the only prison dating website on this list that allows you to contact prisoners in Canada. Sadly, Canadian Inmates Connect is a basic website without most of the features mentioned elsewhere in this article.
It only has five female inmates and their profiles are all listed on one page of this website. Each profile includes a bio, the prisoner’s date of birth, their crime, and expected release date. Each profile includes a postal address for the prisoner, but there is no e-mail feature here.
Due to Canadian privacy laws, the website can’t list any official details about the crimes. It’s up to the prisoners to release this information themselves if they want to. It advises members to search the web for more information about specific inmates before sending them a letter.
Match.com
Match.com isn’t a prison dating website. It’s one of the most famous traditional dating websites - and it’s still going strong after launching in the late nineties. The detailed search system on this website allows you to search specifically for former and current inmates. That’s why it has been included on this list.
The problem is: that few inmates have internet access during their time in American prison (it depends on the state) and Match.com isn’t kitted out with features to post your message to their prison. The prisoner would need to add their jail’s mailing address manually.
Match.com has a pricey monthly subscription too. If you’re only interested in messaging inmates, it probably won’t be worth paying this. There are plenty of free websites on this list with more prisoners - and many of these make it easier to connect with your chosen inmate too.
How to Approach Dating an Inmate
Trying to find love using inmate dating sites will be different from your typical online dating experience. Here are some tips to bear in mind for anyone considering using a prison dating app.
Tip 1. Take your time
You shouldn’t underestimate the potential heartache and frustration of dating prison men or prison women. Dating a prisoner can work out well, but there are many logistical and emotional hurdles to overcome. You won’t spend any time alone together until they are released. In some cases, that might be many years - and there’s every possibility that they’re not the same person you thought they were once they get out.
For this reason, it’s important to take this romance slowly. If you dive in and fall for this person too quickly, you leave yourself open to being hurt.
It’s recommended to begin by writing letters for several months. Ask deep questions. Get to know them on a deeply personal level. The more open you are, the more likely you’ll be able to develop an intimate personal relationship without even meeting each other. Then, decide if you want to meet them in person.
You shouldn’t feel pressured to commit to a prisoner, even after you’ve visited them several times. There’s nothing wrong with dating around while you’re still getting to know them. Your incarcerated love interest might get impatient and begin harassing you for a deeper and more intimate relationship. They have a lot of time on their hands, after all. Still, it’s up to you to move the relationship at a pace you’re comfortable with.
Once you’re in an official relationship with your incarcerated lover, it can help to take a trusted friend or family member to visit them. If this interaction goes well, it can help create extra support from those closest to you. But there’s no need to rush into this stage of the relationship.
In fact, there’s no need to rush into any next stage of an inmate relationship, especially if there will be many years until they are released. This will be a relationship with risks and frustration, so protect your heart by progressing this relationship slowly.
Tip 2. Be careful when being asked for favors
It’s common that the people you meet on prison dating sites will ask you for favors. These favors could range from finding information to contacting third parties or even delivering gifts. You’re free to agree to these favors, provided their requests don’t break prison regulations.
However, you might choose to put your foot down when asked for favors - and that’s fine too.
It’s a good idea not to do your prison pen pal any favors within the first few months of knowing them. This protects you from being used by someone who doesn’t truly care about you.
If they lose interest in you after you refuse favors, that’s a surefire sign they were only interested in what you could do for them. That’s a red flag in any relationship, prison or not.
Tip 3. Understand the rules and potential costs
The regulations regarding prison pen pals and visitors will vary depending on the U.S. state. It’s important to be aware of these, as it’s common for prisoners to tempt you into breaking the rules. There will be specific times when your incarcerated love interest is available for phone calls and visits, and you’ll have to adapt to this schedule.
It’s worth researching the costs of collect calls and prison visits - and how often you can regularly engage in these. It’s best to know about these costs before you start catching feelings for anyone. Bear in mind that all letters, calls, and visits will be monitored by prison staff in one way or another.
If you do begin to catch feelings for an incarcerated person, it’s worth joining support groups for prison spouses. Many of these groups will have tips for coping with the downsides of prison relationships, as well as some strategies for bending the rules without being caught.
Ultimately, it’s key to have realistic expectations of your potential relationship with a prisoner before diving too deep emotionally. Support groups can help you get a clear idea of the pros and cons.
I’d also recommend you avoid prison dating websites that charge a monthly subscription fee for you to be able to contact prisoners. There are plenty of free prison dating sites to use - and there’s no guarantee that subscription-based websites are any better.
