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When documentarians the directors and Charlotte Kaufman entered Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly pleasant atmosphere. Like other Alabama's correctional institutions, Easterling largely bans journalistic entry, but allowed the filmmakers to film its yearly volunteer-run cookout. During film, incarcerated individuals, predominantly Black, celebrated and smiled to musical performances and religious talks. But behind the scenes, a contrasting narrative surfaced—terrifying beatings, hidden violent attacks, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Pleas for assistance were heard from overheated, dirty dorms. As soon as Jarecki moved toward the voices, a corrections officer halted filming, claiming it was dangerous to speak with the inmates without a security chaperone.

“It was obvious that certain sections of the prison that we were forbidden to view,” the filmmaker remembered. “They employ the idea that it’s all about safety and safety, because they don’t want you from comprehending what they’re doing. These facilities are like secret locations.”

The Revealing Documentary Exposing Decades of Abuse

That thwarted barbecue event begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary made over six years. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the feature-length film exposes a gallingly corrupt system rife with unregulated abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable brutality. The film chronicles inmates' herculean efforts, under ongoing physical threat, to improve conditions deemed “illegal” by the US justice department in 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Horrific Conditions

After their abruptly ended prison visit, the directors connected with men inside the state prison system. Led by long-incarcerated organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a group of insiders supplied years of evidence filmed on contraband cell phones. The footage is disturbing:

• Rat-infested cells
• Heaps of excrement
• Rotting food and blood-streaked surfaces
• Regular officer beatings
• Men carried out in remains pouches
• Corridors of individuals unresponsive on substances distributed by officers

One activist starts the documentary in half a decade of isolation as punishment for his organizing; subsequently in production, he is nearly killed by guards and suffers vision in one eye.

The Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy

Such violence is, the film shows, commonplace within the ADOC. While incarcerated witnesses continued to collect evidence, the filmmakers looked into the death of Steven Davis, who was assaulted beyond recognition by guards inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The Alabama Solution traces the victim's mother, a family member, as she seeks truth from a recalcitrant prison authority. She learns the state’s explanation—that Davis menaced guards with a knife—on the news. However several incarcerated witnesses told the family's attorney that Davis wielded only a plastic knife and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by four officers regardless.

A guard, an officer, stomped Davis’s head off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

After three years of evasion, the mother met with the state's “law-and-order” attorney general Steve Marshall, who informed her that the authorities would not press criminal counts. Gadson, who had numerous separate legal actions claiming brutality, was promoted. Authorities covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—a portion of the $51m used by the government in the last half-decade to defend staff from wrongdoing claims.

Forced Work: The Contemporary Slavery System

The government profits financially from continued mass incarceration without oversight. The Alabama Solution details the shocking scope and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work system that effectively operates as a present-day version of chattel slavery. This program supplies $450 million in products and services to the government annually for virtually minimal wages.

Under the program, incarcerated laborers, overwhelmingly African American residents deemed unsuitable for society, make $2 a 24-hour period—the same pay scale set by the state for imprisoned workers in the year 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. They labor more than 12 hours for private companies or government locations including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“Authorities allow me to labor in the public, but they don’t trust me to give me parole to get out and go home to my family.”

Such workers are numerically less likely to be released than those who are not, even those deemed a greater public safety threat. “This illustrates you an understanding of how valuable this low-cost workforce is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to maintain individuals imprisoned,” stated the director.

State-wide Protest and Continued Fight

The documentary concludes in an remarkable feat of organizing: a state-wide inmates' strike demanding improved treatment in 2022, organized by an activist and Melvin Ray. Illegal cell phone video shows how ADOC broke the protest in less than two weeks by depriving prisoners en masse, choking Council, sending personnel to threaten and beat participants, and severing communication from strike leaders.

A Country-wide Issue Beyond One State

The protest may have failed, but the lesson was evident, and outside the borders of the region. Council ends the film with a plea for change: “The things that are taking place in this state are taking place in every state and in your name.”

From the documented violations at New York’s a prison facility, to the state of California's deployment of 1,100 imprisoned emergency responders to the frontlines of the LA fires for less than standard pay, “one observes similar situations in most jurisdictions in the union,” noted Jarecki.

“This isn’t just Alabama,” added the co-director. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything