It’s always interesting to hear what lengths some will go to, in order to break out of prison. Take the inmate at an El Salvador jail who was caught with a hand grenade stuffed up his backside. Novel idea indeed!

During a security clamp down guards at the San Francisco Gotera prison just outside the capital San Salvador found a V40 grenade, approximately the size of a golf ball, lodged inside the man’s rectum.

The search also revealed 16 other inmates who had each swallowed a mobile phone.

“We’ll have to expel the objects and if they won’t come out we’ll have to perform surgery in hospital,” said Alberto Uribe, a spokesman for the El Salvador prison service.

These inmates aren’t too bright are they? Neither are their visitors - read on.

Just last year prison guards caught a female visitor with an M67 grenade in her vagina. She was visiting an inmate in the overcrowded La Esperanza-Mariona prison on the northern fringes of San Salvador.

It’s common for prisoners in the Central American country to use weapons in attempted escapes or to attack fellow inmates and prison guards. Cellular phones are used to order free gang members to commit crimes or smuggle narcotics. They’re probably used to request that weapons be brought into the prison as well.

If you spent Valentines all alone look no further .. maybe www.hotprisonpals.com will have a just the right man for you. Yep. Some of America’s most desirable felons are lining up to send you love letters, poems and even proposals of marriage.

Some of the men are getting out soon while others are until 2023. If you like space in your relationships this might just be perfect.

The idea for hotprisonpals came from New York pop artist Sam Wagner, who began writing to a friend in jail several years ago. The prisoner then asked Wagner to write to his cell mate who had stopped receiving letters from his family.

Requests for letters from lonely prisoners kept coming, until Wagner was sending a monthly letter to more than 100 inmates.

With no access to the Internet, letters are often the only contact U.S. prisoners have with the outside world.

“Prisoners have real abandonment issues. Friends and family often stop writing after a couple of years,” said Wagner’s business partner, Jason Rupp, who built the Web site in 2003.

“The letters they get through the site are crucial to their well being. They need to know someone on the outside cares.”

The inmates, both straight and gay pay $19 each to have their photos and a short note on the site. Female inmates have been invited to join hotprisonpals but so far none have joined.

“We don’t require that prisoners say what crime they committed,” said Rupp, a 30-year-old photographer who runs the site from his home in the Thai capital, Bangkok.

“We take everybody. If they are murderers or rapists they are not going to put that in the ad.”

“Sometimes the messages get a little racy and we like that,” said Rupp. “We pride ourselves on having the hottest prisoners on the Internet.”

Pen pal friendships often lead to prison visits and serious long-term relationships.

The prison marriage of Erik Menendez — convicted with his brother Lyle of the 1989 murder of his wealthy parents in Beverly Hills — has helped generate interest in prisoner dating.

Menendez married a woman with whom he had corresponded for years from jail. A book by his wife Tammi, “They Said We’d Never Make It”, heavily romanticizes the unconsummated relationship.

“It’s a thrill for women. These are good looking guys and they can seem really exotic from the outside,” said Rupp. “It’s a fantasy. You don’t see any of their flaws.”

“We have scoured the prison floors and checked each bunk bed, both top and bottom, looking for the men that you have dreamed about,” the site says.

Ladies? Get your pens ready.

This past October National Public Radio reported that there might be thousands of prison inmates using cell phones while in jail.

The problem with this of course is that cell phones are contraband in all correctional facilities.

The problem has gotten so bad that Maryland State Senator Ed DeGrange said he was sitting at his desk when an inmate called him on his cell phone with a list of general complaints!

A warden in Texas also reported that he had received a call from the mother of an inmate demanding that the warden do something to improve cell phone reception in the prison so that she could talk to her son easily.

I guess we might as well oblige the inmates and set up their cells like the photo above?

An inmate named Calvin Miller, angry at his former partner who had escaped conviction for crimes they both committed, called police in Kansas City Mo in 2003 with information that led to the police re-opening the case. The former criminal partner, Johnny Chapple, was convicted of murder, along with to others Also convicted was a fourth participant, Calvin Miller.

While Chapple received a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, Miller got 17. By the way, Miller’s well-known nickname, acquired before any of this transpired, is “Cheesy Rat.”