Gavin Newsom Spent $189 Million Giving Every California Inmate a Tablet, and Now They're Being Used as 'Personal Sex Machines': Report
California has never been shy about spending big on ambitious social experiments.
But even by Sacramento standards, the latest controversy surrounding the state prison system is raising eyebrows — and likely blood pressure among taxpayers footing the bill.
A program originally pitched as a modern rehabilitation effort is now under scrutiny after reports revealed inmates were using state-issued technology for far less lofty purposes.
According to a blistering report from Christopher Rufo and Haley Strack for City Journal, as part of sweeping rehabilitation reforms, Newsom approved a program that would see Golden State inmates receive some “free” technology, which in reality was closer to a $189 million price tag for California taxpayers.
Specifically, those inmates were all reportedly given basic tablets.
The program, which ran from 2018 to 2023, was touted as “digital equity” for “justice impacted” people, and as a simple way for inmates to contact family and consume educational content.
Rufo and Strack, who had “contacted dozens of death-row inmates,” reported those inmates are saying that those tablets aren’t exactly being used for those purposes.
Those tablets are apparently being used for pornography consumption and explicit sexual conversations.
More disconcertingly, a former high-ranking California corrections official told Rufo and Strack that some inmates were using tablets to groom minors.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation vociferously denied this report, telling the journalists that these devices were “tightly controlled education tools,” and only provided access to “the Bible, education, and reentry resources that actually reduce crime.”
The inmates, however, told Rufo and Strack that despite the little resistance and restrictions the California prison system applies, there were generally workarounds.
One prisoner told Rufo and Strack that he had used his tablet to get in contact with a 22-year-old German psychology student who was willing to send him nude photos in exchange for getting to pick his brain for a class project.
That same prisoner also said he’s viewed pornography on his tablet, but that there was also a very simple loophole that inmates could exploit. In short, inmates could contact a non-incarcerated friend or family member via video chat, then that friend or family member would play pornography on a separate computer, which the video chat is then focused on.
A different prisoner described that by mixing in pornographic imagery with more wholesome photos on the tablet’s album, he could generally avoid the guards noticing what he was doing.
Yet another prisoner, this one at a different facility altogether, has stricter rules restricting his access to pornography. But he has skirted those rules by receiving videos of women dancing “in a thong.”
Rufo and Strack reported, “The potential for abuse is obvious. The Newsom administration has made the tablet program universal, with no access-restrictions based on offense. And inmates, including child predators, can communicate with members of the public through their tablets, apparently with no age restrictions, at a cost of five cents per text message or 16 cents per minute of video.”
For California — especially under Newsom’s watch — this is just the latest in what’s becoming a series of prison-related black eyes.
As the New York Post reported, back in 2024, an infamous women’s prison was shut down after years of malfeasance — including the revelation that the prison was part of the “largest sexual abuse scandal ever uncovered inside a US federal prison system.”
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