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The Watch
Reporting and commentary on civil liberties and the criminal justice system. Plus other stuff. Click to read The Watch, by Radley Balko, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
- Posts
- 148 from 5 Jan 2022 to 29 Oct 2026
- Posting
- weekly (32 in the last year)
- Kind
- personal blog
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- https://radleybalko.substack.com/feed
2026 27
- The Watch Podcast, Episode 2: An interview with Scott Colom
- Her fiancé and caretaker was murdered by a far-right extremist. Then Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned the killer. My interview with Whitney Mitchell.
- Four years of The Watch: And an appeal for your support
- Roundup: Chris Duncan, civil liberties since 9/11, and Trump’s ongoing, under-the-radar immigration catastrophe
- Breaking: DA demands DNA from Chris Duncan and Haley Oliveaux’s mother
- The framing of Chris Duncan: Part Two
- The framing of Chris Duncan
- Roundup: Chris Duncan, reader response to suing Stephen Miller, our ongoing immigration nightmare
- Suing Stephen Miller
- A guide to racism in the criminal justice system
- The unremitting fire
- How The Free Press spun Trump's cruelty toward migrants as a heroic campaign to "save" kids
- How Bari Weiss's Free Press laundered MAGA talking points about refugees
- You can't hide your lying ICE: The covered-up killing of Ruben Ray Martinez
- You can't hide your lying ICE: The shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis
- Truth, power, and honest journalism
- A conversation with Dawn Deaner, a public defender running for judge
- Why would ChatGPT "confess" to a crime it didn't commit?
- You can't hide your lying ICE: The harassment of Francisco Longoria
- You can't hide your lying ICE
- Immigration questions for Markwayne Mullin
- Questions for Markwayne Mullin
- The Constitution is not a bargaining chip for a budget negotiation
- The Roundup: Too much ICE
- Two cities under siege
- After 35 years in prison, Charlie Vaughn is free
- "The courts are dead." An interview with a fired immigration judge
2025 30
- The roundup -- and a request for your support
- 104 murders in 107 days
- The roundup, and an open thread
- MAGA's $300 million heist
- Odds and ends
- Accusing Jordan Silverman
- Scenes from a protest
- The first episode of Collateral Damage
- Yes, the Trump administration is eviscerating the due process rights of immigrants
- Announcing my new reported podcast with The Intercept. Plus, three years of The Watch!
- As Trump vows to end asylum, a tech bro site valiantly defends him -- from accusations that he wants to end asylum
- Roundup: One month of authoritarianism. Plus: Obama cites The Watch! (sort of)
- A warning from a friend
- Paul House has died -- a wrongly convicted man whom John Roberts gave the okay to execute
- Breaking down the White House lies about D.C.
- Trump's trial run at a police state
- New study: State medical examiners wrongly excused homicides committed by Maryland police officers
- The police militarization debate is over
- Where do we go from here?
- On "unleashing" the police
- The courage to be decent
- Trump's modest proposal
- Profiles in poltroonery: Senator Bill Cassidy
- The redeem team
- Three things the Democrats can do right now
- Trump roundup: Five days
- Profiles in poltroonery: Senator Thom Tillis
- A Q&A with immigration attorneys on the ground
- Clapping for Stalin
- A Chicago judge just erased her predecessor's historic ruling on forensic firearms analysis
2024 31
- How to support journalism
- What to watch for: Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on immigration and mass deportations
- Every kid deserves an Aunt Bobbie
- What to watch for: free speech and the free press
- What to watch for: The weaponization of government
- A chat with John Grisham
- The "broligarch" threat to criminal justice reform
- Trump is still lying about crime
- Roundup: Innocence and executions, the Trump threat, new scrutiny for deaths in police custody
- The innocence hunters
- What JD Vance and Donald Trump don't want you to know about Springfield
- Questions for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump
- The retconning of George Floyd: a coda
- Trump wants immunity for the cops who serve him -- and retribution for the cops who don't
- The coming war with Mexico
- Trump's reckless vaccine ultimatum
- The Supreme Court folds
- Trump and MAGA haven't been mistreated by the criminal justice system. It has favored them.
- The states of indigent defense, part three: Florida and Georgia
- Trump's deportation army
- Listen to these podcasts, 2024 edition
- The states of public defense: part two
- Roundup: New Jersey paid to train cops in racism, abuse; another state bans excited delirium; FBI neglects white supremacist and eventual mass shooter to investigate George Floyd protesters
- That isn't what I meant, your honor
- Book excerpt: Death Row Welcomes You, by Steven Hale
- The retconning of George Floyd, part three: the great flattening
- The retconning of George Floyd: An Update
- The retconning of George Floyd, part two: the autopsy
- The retconning of George Floyd
- Craig Watkins, RIP
- Virginia's culture warrior attorney general
2023 38
- Some thoughts on the Substack controversy
- Donald Trump's mask-off assault on immigration
- Lines in the sand
- Our broken death investigation system
- Friday fun update: "Look at what the kids are doing!"
- On crime in Golden Valley
- Roundup: Baton Rouge police kept a torture black site, local officials arrest critics and protesters, Texas prepares to execute a man convicted with disproven Shaken Baby Syndrome, . . . and 76 hams
- Sarah Huckabee Sanders denies clemency to Charlie Vaughn
- The states of indigent defense: part one
- For just $450, you and Jeff Sessions can honor one of the worst sheriffs in the country
- Reader mail
- The perpetual crisis in indigent defense
- Daisy had other plans
- Roundup: Racially disproportionate police stops return to NYC, FBI wastes public money baiting protesters into crimes, the right crushes on (yet) another authoritarian strongman
- My questions for the GOP candidates
- A Q&A with the visionary "nerd" who's trying to make expert testimony more reliable
- Roundup: LA police union likens journalism to "stalking," dangerous heat overwhelms prisons, a horrific wrongful conviction in Australia
- Rise of the Warrior Cop, 10 years on
- “The attorney general is here. We gotta go now."
- Roundup: Barry Jones is free, another awful AEDPA ruling from SCOTUS, and a steep drop in the murder rate
- What if we treated wrongful convictions and bad police shootings the way we treat plane crashes?
- Devil in the grooves: The case against forensic firearms analysis
- Hi! You've been referred here because you repeated a false claim about California's shoplifting law
- Listen to these podcasts
- Meet the nutty Tennessee Republicans trying to kill police reform in Nashville
- The smearing of Garrett Foster
- Reader mailbag: Is *all* the evidence bad? Plus abortion, the January 6th defendants, and favorite cities
- Roundup: The DOJ's damning report on Louisville PD, Republicans work to disenfranchise urban voters on crime policy, Max's two-week adventure
- Shrugging in the shadow of a monster
- Roundup: Our horrific jails and prisons, courts find new ways to immunize cops from lawsuits, the outrageous police killing of Richard Ward
- Reader mailbag: Bias in journalism, criminal justice in pop culture, and how my own politics have changed
- Roundup: A guide to the Tyre Nichols case, some progress in Arizona, and the harrowing police shooting of Jason Harley Kloepfer
- Tyre Nichols wasn't murdered because of "affirmative action"
- For police PR flacks, quack lives matter
- No-knocking in North Carolina
- Roundup: Pittsburgh chief says city cops will ignore ban on trivial traffic stops; QI gone haywire; a horrifying jail death in Arkansas
- Michigan Supreme Court Justice Richard Bernstein should resign
- On broken brains, a broken system, and burning it all to the ground
2022 22
- "Nobody gives a shit"
- Little Rock appoints its next police chief, and everything new is old again
- Roundup: Police officers face justice for killings in Texas and Louisiana; states leave Biden behind on the death penalty; a nationwide drop in gun violence
- Is Burlington, Vermont suffering a crime wave because "woke" officials cut police funding?
- Roundup: ICE posts asylum seekers' personal information, Austin cops kill burglary victim, the chronic pain chronicles
- A big honking mea culpa
- Roundup: Jail deaths surge, Biden administration ousts reformist Border Patrol chief, $8 million settlement for Daniel Shaver's widow
- Exclusive: Under oath, Little Rock narcotics officers say they destroyed evidence, routinely violated the Fourth Amendment
- Roundup: Corruption scandals at the DEA and Rhode Island State Police; astonishingly low recidivism among federal prisoners sent home during COVID; Adams' bail reform lies may cost Democrats the House
- What the midterms told us about voters and crime
- Your guide to crime and the midterms
- I'm happy to report some good news. Mostly.
- Roundup: Settlement for two men wrongly convicted of Malcolm X's murder; California deputies spend much of their time pulling over black people; RIP, Claude Garrett
- The curious career trajectory of a Little Rock judge
- Roundup: SCOTUS to decide DNA testing in Texas death row case; more fentanyl "touch exposure" hysteria; study finds cops get better results when they aren't assholes
- Washington Post columnist regurgitates nonsense about crime and "Democrat-run cities"
- Yet another scientific body has debunked bitemark analysis. The courts still won't care.
- Weekend roundup: SCOTUS hears Rodney Reed case, COVID relief buys cop toys, the drug war on the ballot
- The left-wing cop-bashing is out of control*
- Roundup: Crime in 2021 was down, or up, or maybe the same; the silly fentanyl Halloween panic, Biden's new pot policy; San Antonio cop shoots teen for eating a burger
- The maddening irrelevance of Charlie Vaughn's innocence
- Welcome to The Watch