US News Metro Long Island Politics

Sports NFL MLB Olympics NBA NHL College Football College Basketball WNBA

Business Personal Finance

Entertainment TV Movies Music Celebrities Awards Theater

Lifestyle Weird But True Sex & Relationships Viral Trends Human Interest Parenting Fashion & Beauty Food & Drink Travel

Health Wellness Fitness Health Care Medicine Men’s Health Women’s Health Mental Health Nutrition

Science Space Environment Wildlife Archaeology

Today’s Paper Covers Columnists Horoscopes Crosswords & Games Sports Odds Podcasts Careers

Email Newsletters Official Store Home Delivery Tips

Switch between CA and NY editions here.

Gavin Newsom delivers porn to death row inmates — at taxpayer expense

Gavin Newsom has sought to transform California’s 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, and dismantled San Quentin State Prison’s death row.

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. The prisoners 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.

We contacted dozens of death-row inmates, who told us that prisoners in the state system use their 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.

When reached for comment, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said the tablets were “tightly controlled education tools” that provided inmates with “access to the Bible, education, and reentry resources that actually reduce crime.”

But inmates told us a different story.

In the 1980s, rapist and serial murderer Robert Maury 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........

© New York Post