Kiwi drug mule seeks love

Photo / Thinkstock

A Kiwi drug smuggler is advertising for partners, penpals and cash on a jailhouse internet dating site from her US prison.

Kirsty Harris was jailed after trying to smuggle 5.8kg of cocaine from South America to Auckland on a cruise ship with former boyfriend Tony Wilkinson.

This week, Harris posted four pictures of herself on the Jailhouse Babes website, and writes: "I am a beautiful, warm, bubbly and sensitive Kiwi that made a terrible mistake and am paying for that mistake with my freedom.

"I love to talk to people and also love having my friends and family around me, so being incarcerated away from them and with not much contact will be hard. I am seeking a caring person to help me get through the tough times ahead with correspondence and donations."

The website has promoted Harris as a "featured felon".

She is housed in the low security Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Dublin, California.

Former inmates include "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss and a former Ukranian prime minister.

Harris was sentenced in May to three years and one month in prison.

Inmates are employed in textiles manufacture of custom draperies, parachutes, and disaster blankets. They also sort and repair USPS mailbags. As well, the prison holds a call centre that employs 250 inmates.

On the Jailhouse Babes site, Harris states she has hazel eyes, brown hair and details her physical measurements.

Harris, originally from Te Puke, said she had worked in dairy farming and she was up front about her drug smuggling, giving her projected release date as January 10, 2014.

Canterbury University criminologist Greg Newbold said prison life in the US was much tougher than in New Zealand.

"There you are doing hard time. Prison authorities are a lot more authoritarian and officious. You are a number and you are treated like a number," Newbold said.

"People in prison really hunger for contact with the outside. They are lonely as hell and fall in love easily."

At her sentencing, Harris apologised for embarrassing her "friends, family and country".