EVER wondered what our nation's prison population get up to with all that spare time on their hands? Well, cultivating their image on social networking internet sites has developed into a cult among the prison population.

Many now seem to use crime as a 'road to stardom' and it's not hard to see the overlap enjoyed by some of the Bebo/YouTube/Big Brother generation.

Some are currently using the internet to build up a multitude of reputations. They are engaging in a number of activities (some of them plain strange) not for the power or wealth, but for the exposure and reputation.

"Money on my mind, so money is all I think of, stepping out of the motherfuckin car, they in awe, I'm looking like a star bitch when you see me make a wish," the lyrics to Lil Wayne's Money On My Mind, which was the track accompanying a YouTube video posted by Karl Breen, a Mountjoy Prison inmate, as he posed topless in his prison cell. Perhaps this is a testament to the growing cockiness amongst Ireland's criminal population -- both in prison and outside its walls.

Karl Breen was sentenced to nine years in prison last October for the manslaughter of his friend Martin McLoughlin in a drunken New Year's Eve fight at Jury's hotel near Croke Park in which he stabbed McLoughlin three times.

Yet he manages to maintain an active Bebo and YouTube account. Breen, who goes by the online nickname of 'InfamousD22', was shown in the video displaying his tattooed and muscular torso, reminiscent of the cover of Mark 'Chopper' Read's first book in which he catalogues his life of crime, Chopper.

The video in question was taken down following a security crackdown in the prison which led to a violent riot on Saturday, July 12. However, his YouTube account remains active.

Other videos by Breen include one of him doing chin-ups on a blue garda station lantern, prior to his prison sentence, as well as a three-part series of videos entitled 'Out of it!!' displaying various individuals in what appear to be drug-induced states of euphoria. In one, a young man throws himself down a staircase three consecutive times, with the encouragement of the person holding the camera, while in another the same individual appears to believe that he is a snail, as he shuffles around the room on the floor.

Another shows an unconscious associate being slapped in the face and head, repeatedly with a leather belt, to the laughs of those around.

With friends like this who needs enemies?

Alarmingly, he has also posted a demonstration video for an Auto-Glock handgun to his personal You Tube page.

Other prisoners are also using the internet to connect with the outside world in a bid to shake the boredom which prison is supposed to involve.

One such individual, named Brian, isn't afraid to tell all in his personal Bebo introduction in which he quite bluntly tells the world: "Hi my name is Brian, I am currently servin' a sentence in Mountjoy for a number of violent crimes! But enuff said bout all dat ... O yeah!! Can't wait to be out."

Even those on the outside appear aware of how easily those in our prisons can access such sites. One Bebo user has the following salutation posted on her profile: "Have a boyfriend but he's locked up at da moment ... Miss ya babes xXx. Big up da boys in Portlaoise Prison."

And much of this bravado is posted to attract such women, who will 'stand by their men' supporting them, no matter what they might have done.

Others are attracted to the danger and celebrity associated with well known criminals; they want to be their friends, lovers, saviours and supporters.

Jack Levin, a Criminologist who is Director of the Brudnick Centre for Violence at Northeastern University in Boston, refers to such individuals as 'killer groupies'.

Author of Women Who Love Men Who Kill, Sheila Isenberg, offers the following explanation for this peculiar realm of attraction: "The man in prison has a lot of time on his hands and can romance a woman the way most men can't because they don't have the time. A man in prison can put a woman up on a pedestal and pay attention to her."

When Scott Peterson, who was convicted of killing his wife and unborn child in 2005, was placed on death row, barely an hour passed before calls began to flood into the San Quentin State Prison Warden's office, with women pleading for his mailing address.

One enterprising prison inmate, Todd Whiting, has himself posted on www.conpals.com with the following comment: "I am looking to build my network of friends and contacts from all over the States and the world. By doing so, I hope to enhance my possibilities for opportunity when I am released."

Perhaps, Irish prisoners are doing the same from their prison cells. Certainly there are some that are finding various ways to communicate with the outside world in order to either build up their reputation or to maintain it.

A prison officer I spoke with was surprised to hear that prisoners in Ireland were using social networking sites such as Bebo and YouTube as prisoners, apparently, "have computer access at certain times, but no internet. It's just the prison officers that can access the internet".

However, he did concede that it may be possible for these individuals to gain internet access, through mobile phones smuggled into the prison or "thrown over the wall".

In a plot straight out of an old film, an unsuspecting nun was inadvertently used in a ploy to sneak a mobile phone into Mountjoy Prison stashed inside a birthday cake in July. She was delivering the cake that had been requested by one of the prisoners, when the phone was spotted during the x-ray scanning of the iced treat. The fact that the possession of a mobile phone in prison is an offence and may lead to further jail time or a monetary fine, does not appear to be a major deterrent to those on the inside in Ireland at present.

A YouTube video entitled 'Mountjoy Prison', shows the inside of the prison from various angles and with various views including one looking directly out through cell bars, set to the soundtrack of A-kon's song Locked up. It's all a bit 'Irish' though, a Fair City version of the underworld. It is not clear whether the person that posted this was a prisoner or a prison worker, but either way, it is equally worrying.

It was reported in April that another Mountjoy prisoner had been using Bebo to keep up with the outside world, posting pictures of himself and other inmates posing and flexing muscles for the camera. "Come on everybody," he wrote, "Don't be shy leave a message when you drop into my profile." And they flocked to the site in droves. In one week alone, this prisoner had 500 hits recorded on his Bebo site.

The Irish Prison Service said in July that mobile phone signal blocking technology was being developed at the Midlands Prison, and though it is undergoing some "fine tuning of the system, all indications predict that the system will work". But on August 1, having been overheard speaking in a low tone, John Gilligan was found to have a mobile phone in his cell, alongside a small quantity of body building drugs.

The use of social networking websites by those in prison raises a major question not only with the security in our prisons, but also of the reach and influence of certain prisoners -- even behind bars.

'InfamousD22' strikes one as an intimidating figure. His choice of YouTube videos goes a step further in displaying the interests of this individual and certainly, that is the entire point. His and others' use of online communication is a way to remind those in the outside world, that they may in fact be gone for the present, but not far and not forever.