New Season Starts February 6.
KQED’s award-winning investigative podcast On Our Watch returns on February 6, with a gripping tale of corruption and tragedy that takes listeners inside California State Prison, Sacramento, also known as “New Folsom.” The show exposes the human cost of a system that promises to keep people safe, but instead is bent on protecting itself.
Hosted by KQED criminal justice reporter Sukey Lewis with reporting by Julie Small, On Our Watch: New Folsom tells the story of two correctional officers, Valentino Rodriguez Jr. and Sergeant Kevin Steele, who work in an elite investigative unit and what happens when they report corruption and abuse by their fellow officers.
KQED has spent more than two years digging through hundreds of internal records, listening to interrogation tapes, and interviewing officers and incarcerated people to uncover the challenges Rodriguez and Steele overcame to speak out even as people they trusted turned against them.
On Our Watch: New Folsom also gives listeners a window into hundreds of once-confidential documents KQED obtained by suing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation [CDCR] that reveal a startling pattern of use of force enabled by a culture of silence at this high-security prison.