Cali spent $189 million to give iPads to every state prisoner. They use them for grooming

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California spent nearly $189 million to give every state prisoner a free iPad. We interviewed a dozen death row inmates, who told us that prisoners are using the tablets to watch porn, engage in x-rated chats, and groom minors on the outside.

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Under Governor Gavin Newsom, California has sought to transform its massive prison system into a Nordic-style rehabilitation program. Newsom has placed a moratorium on all executions, transferred condemned prisoners to facilities across the state, dismantled San Quentin State Prison’s death row, and turned the notorious prison into a therapeutic center, with art, classrooms, a café, and podcast studios.

As part of this transformation, the Newsom administration approved a $189 million contract to provide new digital tablets—generic, flat-screen devices in a plastic shell—to every inmate in the state prison system, at “no cost” to offenders. The administration heralded the effort to replace inmates’ old tablets—which were piloted in 2018 and given to nearly all prisoners by 2023—as a step toward “digital equity” for “justice impacted” individuals, who could, in theory, use the devices to contact their families, consume “educational” content, and “learn new technology.”

In reality, taxpayer-funded tablets have also been used for more lurid endeavors. In this exclusive City Journal investigation, we contacted dozens of death-row inmates, who told us that prisoners in the state system use such devices to watch pornography and have explicit sexual conversations. Some prisoners, according to a former high-ranking California corrections official, use their tablets to groom minors. Though the state has claimed to regulate explicit content, the inmates told us that users can easily evade detection.

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In the 1980s, a rapist and serial murderer named Robert Maury earned the nickname “the Tipster Killer” for calling in anonymous tips identifying the locations of the dead bodies he left behind. During this period, he killed a woman by strangling her with a nylon clothesline, strangled and killed another two women, and brutally raped a fourth before he was caught by authorities.

Now, Maury is living at a state prison facility in Stockton, California, where he has viewed pornography on his taxpayer-funded digital tablet. In an interview, Maury told us inmates can receive “nude pictures” and watch pornography through their devices. In his case, he claimed to have received a topless photo from a 22-year-old German psychology student who was “hoping that I would share my story with her for her class project.” After the student sent the photo, Maury said he “flirted” with her “for a while.”

Maury said another way that inmates can watch pornography is through the video chat application. In this scheme, he explained, an inmate can call someone on the outside, that person can “put porn on their TV,” and the inmate can “watch with them.” Maury specified that he has never explicitly asked anyone to broadcast pornography in this manner, but when it happens, he “just say[s] cool and thank you.”

Samuel Amador, another serial killer who was sentenced to death, had a similar experience. He said inmates watch pornographic videos and have sexually explicit conversations through their tablets. The videos, he said, are delivered in “30 second clips.” Amador has created a rotation on his tablet between explicit and wholesome content: “I watch porn an[d] short clips of my family at the Beach.”

Sometimes, guards catch lewd messages, Amador said. But, in general, the restrictions are easy to evade. “[T]hey try to prevent us,” he said about sexting, “but we get around their bullshite.”

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