Waste of the Day: Cali. Inmates' Lewd Tablets
Topline: The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says the digital tablets it provides to all prisoners are “tightly controlled education tools” that help inmates learn new technology skills and get “access to the Bible.”
A City Journal investigation tells a very different story. Inmates use the tablets — purchased with $189 million in taxpayer funds — to watch pornography and send sexually explicit messages to each other and, allegedly, to minors.
Key facts: City Journal spoke with dozens of death-row inmates and former prison officials.
Douglas Eckenrod, former deputy director of California’s adult parole operations, said his concerns about the tablets were ignored by other state workers. “I would bet my pension that there’s a vast amount of childhood pornography on the tablets,” he said. “There are probably several thousand [children] that are currently being groomed.”
Robert Mauray, a convicted rapist and serial murderer being held in Stockton, told City Journal that a 22-year-old college student reached out to him on his tablet to interview him for a class project. Mauray said he solicited nude photographs from her and “flirted” with her “for a while.”
Prosecutors claim that Nathaniel Ray Diaz, already convicted of sex crimes against a 12-year-old girl, used his tablet to call her thousands of times from inside his cell and ask her for explicit photographs.
The state passed new regulations in April meant to monitor and prevent the violations, but Maury told City Journal that many inmates have already been able to circumvent them. “If you try hard enough,” he said, there “is always a way around the system.”
Background: The tablets were announced in 2023 as a way to spread “digital equity” among “justice-impacted” individuals. More than 90,000 have been distributed. The total cost of the contract could reach $315 million if the state chooses to extend it.
Inmates don’t have to pay to receive their tablets, but they’re billed five cents per text message and 16 cents per minute of video call. State Sen. Josh Becker is pushing to eliminate those fees.
California is not the only state that may be having second thoughts about giving tablets to its inmates. Prisoners in Massachusetts use their devices to plan drug smuggling operations and intimidate witnesses.
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Summary: Taxpayers may have already had qualms about funding prisoners’ iPads, but they should at least be used exclusively for rehabilitation.
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