A state program meant to close a “digital divide” behind bars has produced some shocking results: inmates on death row say taxpayer-funded tablets gave them steady streams of pornography, private sexual messages, and fresh chances to groom victims. High-profile convicts, prison staff, and a former parole director all describe a system that promised education and access to the Bible but delivered access to people it should not have reached. The program cost taxpayers $189 million, and critics say oversight has been weak while the risk to children and victims grows. This article walks through those first-hand accounts, official defenses, and why critics from the right want stricter limits now.
The program was pitched as a tool for rehabilitation, and officials insisted the tablets were “tightly controlled education tools” to provide inmates “access to the Bible, education, and re-entry resources that actually reduce crime.” Those are noble goals on paper, but several inmates and outside experts say the reality looks very different. Where there’s money and screens, bad actors will find workarounds fast, and critics argue the state dropped the ball on basic safeguards.
One notorious inmate says the tablets gave him a route into sexual conversations with outsiders. Robert Maury, a convicted rapist and serial murderer from the 1980s, claimed a German psychology student sent him topless photos as part of a supposed class project, a stunning example of how contact can drift from academic to exploitative. Maury, who was known as the “tipster killer” for contacting a crime tip line before his capture, did not tout the Bible; he talked about attention and access instead.
Another death-row prisoner, Samuel Amador, described a routine that should alarm anyone in charge of corrections. He said he alternates between watching short clips of his “family at the beach” and pornography delivered in 30-second clips. Guards try to stop sexually explicit texts when they see them but inmates figure out how to “get around their bulls**t,” according to the accounts, which point to simple human ingenuity being used to defeat basic monitoring.
More troubling still are allegations of grooming and child exploitation routed through the same devices. One inmate named Nathaniel Ray Diaz reportedly used a tablet to talk with a girl for hours and to sexually exploit her, and he now faces new charges tied to alleged child exploitation while already serving time for sex crimes against a 12-year-old. Those criminal charges are exactly the kind of outcomes that should trigger immediate policy fixes and criminal referrals for anyone who enabled the access without proper safeguards.
Douglas Eckenrod, a former California parole operations director, warned the problem runs much deeper than a single case. “I would bet my pension that there’s a vast amount of childhood pornography on the tablets,” Eckenrod said. “There are probably several thousand [children] that are currently being groomed.” His blunt assessment matches what victims’ advocates have feared: the technology can magnify harm if it is not tightly restricted and audited.
State spending decisions matter here. The program funneled $189 million in taxpayer money into giving inmates free access to tablets, and critics on the right see that as a clear misallocation when basic protections were not ironclad. Lawmakers should demand itemized spending reports, immediate audits, and criminal referrals where warranted, rather than letting bureaucrats remake corrections policy without oversight.
Hard questions are now on the table for California politicians who supported this rollout. If tablets cannot be made safe, funding needs to be reined in, administrators must be held personally accountable, and any company supplying the tech should face strict transparency rules. The immediate priority has to be protecting children and victims while restoring basic public accountability to a program that was supposed to help people, not endanger them.
