California prisoners watching pornography, grooming children on taxpayer-funded tablets: report

In March 2025, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on a state contract in which the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) has agreed to pay $189 million over six years (potentially extendable another four years for a total of $315 million) to Securus Technologies to supply prisoners with “communication tablets” with which they can “call their friends and family members for free” as well as “download books and games onto the tablets, and their activities on the devices can be tracked.”

This week, however, Christopher Rufo and Haley Strack published a report at City Journal alleging the tablets have been used for far uglier purposes.

CDCR maintains the devices are “tightly controlled education tools” that offer “access to the Bible, education, and reentry resources that actually reduce crime,” but the authors interviewed “dozens” of death-row inmates and others in the system who attested that the tablets are being used to watch porn, engage in sexual conversations, and even groom minors on the outside.

For example, Robert “Tipster Killer” Maury, who was convicted of murdering three women and raping a fourth, recounted “flirting” with a 22-year-old psychology student who sent him a topless photo in hopes of interviewing him for a class project and explained how easy it is to video chat with someone on the outside, have them “put porn on their TV,” and “watch with them.” 

Other inmates recall similar experiences, which are technically against the rules but, in the words of death-row serial killer Samuel Amador, “we get around their bullshit.”

Most disturbingly, because tablet access is not restricted based on the nature of an inmate’s crimes, convicted child predator Nathaniel Ray Diaz was allegedly able to use his tablet to make “thousands” of calls to the 12-year-old girl he victimized, pressuring her to send him sexually explicit images and speak with him “for hours, every day.”

“I would bet my pension that there’s a vast amount of childhood pornography on the tablets,” said Douglas Eckenrod, former deputy director of California’s adult parole operations. “There are probably several thousand (children) that are currently being groomed.”

Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office vociferously denied the report, claiming City Journal “provides ZERO evidence for its outrageous claims,” belittling its sources as “convicted murderers and a random guy who doesn’t even live in California.”

“FACT: Prison tablets DO NOT provide open internet access,” Newsom’s office said. “FACT: Communications are monitored, recorded, searchable, and investigated. FACT: These tablets are are (sic) used for education, rehabilitation, family communication, and reentry support proven to reduce crime — conveniently omitted from this propaganda post.”

Rufo responded, “Actually, our sources are: A former high-ranking California prison official;” federal prosecutors, who are pursuing charges against a prisoner for grooming a minor through his state-issued tablet;” and “a dozen current inmates who are enjoying your ‘porn for prisoners’ program.”

As the most far-left state in the Union, California’s radicalism has manifested itself in the prison system in other ways before. In 2024, former California Department of Corrections correctional lieutenant Hector Bravo Ferrel spoke out about what he saw since the state began allowing prisoners to be housed by “gender identity” rather than biological sex.

“Some of them are in there for sex crimes. That’s unethical, that’s immoral, that’s dangerous,” Ferrel said of male inmates taking advantage of the opportunity to be strip-searched by female guards. “Now you have females looking at the male body parts — and the inmates are demanding it (…) Every time an inmate goes to a visit, every time an inmate exits his cell to go to the Ad Seg (administrative segregation) yard, when they go work in a vocational trade, they get strip searched to and from. Every time there is an incident and the inmate is placed in a holding cell, an unclothed body search is conducted per policy.”

He recalled how Newsom’s signing of SB 132 in 2020 was met with excitement from inmates who realized the state “gave them a perfect storm to be able to exploit their sexual predatory behaviors. They were like kids in the candy store because they knew they were going from a men’s prison to a females’ prison. And we would watch them take off in the bus.”

California’s leaders have also made the state a haven for abortion-on-demand and underage gender transitions, and lawmakers recently introduced a proposal to let illegal immigrant professors continue teaching at community colleges via webcam even after being deported.