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As filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman visited the Easterling facility in 2019, they witnessed a deceptively cheerful atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama's prisons, Easterling largely bans journalistic access, but allowed the filmmakers to film its yearly community-organized barbecue. During camera, incarcerated men, mostly African American, celebrated and smiled to live music and sermons. However off camera, a contrasting narrative surfaced—horrific beatings, unreported stabbings, and indescribable violence swept under the rug. Cries for assistance came from overheated, dirty dorms. When Jarecki moved toward the voices, a prison official halted filming, stating it was unsafe to speak with the inmates without a security chaperone.

“It became apparent that there were areas of the facility that we were not allowed to view,” Jarecki remembered. “They use the excuse that it’s all about security and safety, because they don’t want you from comprehending what they’re doing. These prisons are like black sites.”

A Revealing Documentary Uncovering Years of Abuse

That interrupted cookout event opens The Alabama Solution, a stunning new film produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by the director and his partner, the feature-length production reveals a shockingly corrupt system rife with unregulated abuse, forced labor, and unimaginable brutality. The film chronicles inmates' herculean struggles, under constant physical threat, to improve conditions deemed “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Covert Recordings Reveal Ghastly Realities

Following their suddenly ended prison visit, the directors connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by veteran activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a group of insiders supplied years of evidence filmed on illegal mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested cells
• Piles of human waste
• Rotting meals and blood-stained floors
• Regular officer beatings
• Men carried out in remains pouches
• Hallways of men near-catatonic on substances sold by officers

One activist begins the film in half a decade of solitary confinement as retribution for his activism; subsequently in filming, he is nearly killed by officers and loses vision in an eye.

The Case of Steven Davis: Brutality and Secrecy

This violence is, the film shows, standard within the ADOC. As imprisoned sources persisted to gather proof, the directors looked into the death of an inmate, who was assaulted beyond recognition by officers inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The documentary follows Davis’s parent, a family member, as she pursues answers from a recalcitrant ADOC. The mother learns the state’s version—that Davis threatened guards with a knife—on the television. However several imprisoned observers told the family's lawyer that Davis wielded only a toy utensil and yielded at once, only to be assaulted by multiple officers regardless.

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

After three years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray met with the state's “tough on crime” top lawyer a state official, who told her that the state would not press criminal counts. Gadson, who faced more than 20 individual legal actions alleging brutality, was promoted. The state covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every guard—a portion of the $51m used by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to defend officers from misconduct lawsuits.

Compulsory Labor: A Contemporary Exploitation Scheme

This state profits economically from continued imprisonment without supervision. The film describes the shocking extent and double standard of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work arrangement that essentially functions as a modern-day mutation of historical bondage. This program provides $450m in goods and work to the government each year for virtually minimal wages.

In the program, imprisoned laborers, overwhelmingly Black residents considered unfit for the community, earn $2 a 24-hour period—the same daily wage rate set by Alabama for imprisoned labor in the year 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. These individuals labor upwards of 12 hours for corporate entities or public sites including the government building, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and municipal offices.

“They trust me to labor in the community, but they refuse me to grant release to leave and return to my family.”

Such laborers are statistically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those deemed a higher security risk. “That gives you an idea of how important this low-cost labor is to the state, and how important it is for them to maintain individuals locked up,” stated the director.

Prison-wide Protest and Ongoing Fight

The Alabama Solution concludes in an remarkable feat of organizing: a system-wide prisoners’ strike calling for improved treatment in October 2022, led by Council and his co-organizer. Illegal mobile footage reveals how prison authorities broke the protest in 11 days by starving prisoners collectively, choking the leader, deploying soldiers to intimidate and attack participants, and severing contact from organizers.

The National Issue Beyond One State

The protest may have ended, but the lesson was evident, and outside the state of the region. Council concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The abuses that are occurring in Alabama are taking place in your state and in your name.”

From the reported abuses at New York’s a prison facility, to the state of California's deployment of over a thousand imprisoned emergency responders to the danger zones of the LA fires for less than standard pay, “one observes comparable situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” said the filmmaker.

“This is not only Alabama,” added Kaufman. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and language, and a punitive strategy to {everything