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Pen. Code, § 4574 · Chapter 3. Unauthorized Communications With Prisons and Prisoners

Pen. Code, § 4574

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

(a) Except when otherwise authorized by law, or when authorized by the person in charge of the prison or other institution referred to in this section or by an officer of the institution empowered by the person in charge of the institution to give such authorization, any person, who knowingly brings or sends into, or knowingly assists in bringing into, or sending into, any state prison or prison road camp or prison forestry camp, or other prison camp or prison farm or any other place where prisoners of the state prison are located under the custody of prison officials, officers or employees, or any jail or any county road camp in this state, or within the grounds belonging or adjacent to any such institution, any firearms, deadly weapons, or explosives, and any person who, while lawfully confined in a jail or county road camp possesses therein any firearm, deadly weapon, explosive, tear gas or tear gas weapon, is guilty of a felony and punishable by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 for two, three, or four years.

(b) Except as provided in subdivision (a), any person who knowingly brings or sends into those places any tear gas or tear gas weapons which results in the release of such tear gas or use of such weapon is guilty of a felony and punishable by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 for two, three, or four years.

(c) Except as provided in subdivision (a), any person who knowingly brings or sends into those places any tear gas or tear gas weapons is guilty of a misdemeanor and punishable by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six months, or by fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both such fine and imprisonment.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Amended by Stats. 2011, Ch. 15, Sec. 494. (AB 109) Effective April 4, 2011. Operative October 1, 2011, by Sec. 636 of Ch. 15, as amended by Stats. 2011, Ch. 39, Sec. 68.

Source of truth

Edition
As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Official file
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN&sectionNum=4574.
Text hash
sha256 ce05752e0a261cb76af4cadc9f3407b40dc7fec7af53ddb72672e959e062c0c2
Composed by
compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section

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