Crims date women who like bars

ON SATURDAY night Sune Holt Pedersen is going on his first date with a woman he met online. The Danish former dairy farmer plans to take her out for dinner and to the cinema.

If it goes well, he hopes she will come home with him – to his prison cell.

Pedersen, 27, one-third through a three-year sentence for dealing drugs, met his potential flame through ‘‘date an inmate’’, an online group set up by prisoners two weeks ago.

The group has more than 10,000 members, most of them women looking for a man on the inside. Pedersen has been contacted by up to five women every day.

‘‘It’s a good way to get in touch with women,’’ he said. ‘‘On regular chat sites women often get spooked when they find out you’re an inmate, but here they know.’’

Most of Denmark’s jails are low-security ‘‘open’’ prisons. Here, inmates can use the internet, cook their own food and get weekend leave. Only spouses are eligible for conjugal visits, though visitors can spend time alone with inmates in their private bedrooms.

Kim Uth Jensen, 27, one of the founders of the group, said that for many prisoners the prospect of finding romance provided an alternative to returning to a life of crime. ‘‘There are prisoners who don’t have anyone to come to visit them. We hope we can give them something to fight for,’’ he said.

The guards are also in favour. Lars Erik Siegumfeldt, press officer at the Danish prison and probation service, said: ‘‘We know that when inmates have served their sentence, if they have a family or a partner that is one of the key elements in not committing new crimes.’’