Prison officials now have policy to prevent inmates from having social media accounts

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - In January we showed you this. A Facebook page for Elmer Wayne Henley. Henley took part in torturing raping and killing at least 28 Houston area teenage boys between 1970 and 1973.

Henley is far from being the only Texas prison inmate whose getting their voice heard through social media with the help of someone in the free world.

“You have a lot of infamous cases in Houston crime history that now have Facebook pages,” said crime victims advocate Andy Kahan.

Henley’s page is already gone.

Our report prompted the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to make it easier for other inmates to vanish from Facebook and other social media sites.

“At least now we’re moving from our perspective, the victim’s rights perspective in the right direction,” Kahan said.

Most social media companies like Facebook prohibit a third party from operating an account as someone else.
Of course that’s the only way inmates can have accounts.

Facebook also requires correctional agencies to have written policies in place that prohibit inmates from maintaining social media accounts.

TDCJ tells us it now has a new written policy that strengthens the agency’s ability to request an inmate’s media account be deactivated.

“Now TDCJ can say yes we have a policy in place it’s a violation of our policy and according to your standards you must remove these pages,” said Kahan.

TDCJ is already using the new policy which began April 1st to put an end to inmate Facebook pages it has knowledge of.

“Within the next few days known pages will be removed,” Kahan said.