Watch Louder with Crowder every weekday at 11:00 AM Eastern, only on Rumble Premium!

Gavin Newsom’s California spent over $180 million to give state prisoners free tablets, which was funded by taxpayers. That is bad enough, considering law-abiding citizens don’t get such a privilege. Nonetheless, the scandal is much worse than that, as many prisoners used it to watch porn and chat with minors, according to a report from City Journal.

Under Governor Gavin Newsom, California has sought to transform its 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, dismantled San Quentin State Prison’s death row, and turned the notorious prison into a therapeutic center, with art, classrooms, a café, and podcast studios.

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, who could, in theory, use the devices to contact their families, consume “educational” content, and “learn new technology.”

It turns out, though, that this so-called “digital equity” ends up causing more harm than good. Who could have possibly guessed that? And while the left can make up any term they wish, such as “justice-impacted individuals,” it does not change the reality that they are giving gifts to people who have committed crimes bad enough to be serving prison sentences in a criminally soft state. That tells you all you need to know -- which is that state officials have zero sympathy for crime victims, as they afford special privileges to convicts.

In reality, taxpayer-funded tablets have also been used for more lurid endeavors. In this exclusive City Journal investigation, we contacted dozens of death-row inmates, who told us that prisoners in the state system use such 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. For some, the devices have become personal sex machines. In the words of one inmate, California’s death row is populated with desperately “horny” criminals who see the tablets as a way to satisfy their basest fantasies and desires—all thanks to the California taxpayer.

This is disgusting, deranged, and has no place in a just society. And who could have possibly predicted that criminals given internet access would use it to groom minors? Anyone with a fraction of a brain -- that is who. So not only was this whole mess predictable, but we can almost be certain officials won't do anything about it. More people will be harmed, and criminals will be allowed to watch porn all under the guise of digital equity. It truly is unfathomable.

- YouTube www.youtube.com