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As documentarians Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman entered the Easterling facility in 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly pleasant scene. Like the state's Alabama correctional institutions, Easterling largely prohibits journalistic entry, but allowed the crew to film its yearly community-organized cookout. On camera, imprisoned men, mostly African American, celebrated and laughed to musical performances and religious talks. However off camera, a contrasting story emerged—horrific assaults, hidden violent attacks, and unimaginable violence concealed from public view. Cries for help were heard from sweltering, filthy dorms. When Jarecki moved toward the voices, a prison official stopped recording, claiming it was dangerous to interact with the men without a police escort.

“It was obvious that certain sections of the prison that we were not allowed to view,” the filmmaker remembered. “They employ the excuse that it’s all about safety and security, since they aim to prevent you from understanding what is occurring. These prisons are like secret locations.”

The Revealing Documentary Uncovering Decades of Neglect

That interrupted barbecue event begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour production exposes a gallingly corrupt system filled with unchecked mistreatment, compulsory work, and extreme cruelty. It chronicles prisoners’ herculean struggles, under ongoing physical threat, to improve situations declared “illegal” by the US justice department in the year 2020.

Covert Recordings Reveal Ghastly Realities

After their suddenly terminated prison tour, the directors connected with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by long-incarcerated activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a group of insiders provided multiple years of footage filmed on illegal cell phones. These recordings is disturbing:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Piles of excrement
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked surfaces
• Regular officer violence
• Men removed out in remains pouches
• Hallways of men unresponsive on substances distributed by staff

Council begins the documentary in five years of solitary confinement as punishment for his activism; later in filming, he is almost killed by officers and loses sight in one eye.

The Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Secrecy

This violence is, the film shows, standard within the prison system. While imprisoned sources continued to collect proof, the directors investigated the killing of an inmate, who was beaten beyond recognition by officers inside the William E Donaldson prison in 2019. The Alabama Solution follows the victim's mother, Sandy Ray, as she seeks answers from a uncooperative prison authority. The mother discovers the state’s explanation—that her son threatened officers with a knife—on the television. However several incarcerated witnesses informed Ray’s lawyer that Davis held only a toy knife and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by multiple guards regardless.

A guard, an officer, stomped the inmate's head off the concrete floor “repeatedly.”

Following three years of evasion, Sandy Ray met with Alabama’s “tough on crime” top lawyer a state official, who informed her that the state would decline to file criminal counts. Gadson, who had more than 20 individual lawsuits alleging brutality, was given a higher rank. The state paid for his legal bills, as well as those of all other officer—a portion of the $51 million used by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to defend staff from wrongdoing claims.

Compulsory Work: A Contemporary Slavery Scheme

This government benefits financially from ongoing imprisonment without supervision. The film describes the shocking scope and double standard of the prison system's labor program, a compulsory-work system that effectively operates as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. The system provides $450 million in products and services to the state each year for almost no pay.

Under the program, imprisoned workers, overwhelmingly African American residents considered unsuitable for the community, earn $2 a day—the identical pay scale established by Alabama for imprisoned labor in the year 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. These individuals work more than half a day for private companies or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and municipal offices.

“Authorities allow me to labor in the public, but they don’t trust me to grant parole to get out and return to my loved ones.”

Such workers are statistically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those deemed a higher public safety risk. “This illustrates you an understanding of how valuable this low-cost workforce is to the state, and how critical it is for them to keep individuals imprisoned,” said Jarecki.

Prison-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The documentary concludes in an incredible achievement of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ strike calling for better treatment in 2022, led by an activist and Melvin Ray. Contraband mobile video shows how ADOC broke the strike in 11 days by starving prisoners en masse, assaulting Council, deploying personnel to intimidate and attack participants, and cutting off contact from organizers.

The National Issue Outside One State

This strike may have ended, but the lesson was clear, and beyond the state of Alabama. Council concludes the documentary with a plea for change: “The things that are taking place in this state are taking place in your region and in your name.”

From the reported violations at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to the state of California's use of 1,100 imprisoned emergency responders to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for less than minimum wage, “one observes similar situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” noted Jarecki.

“This isn’t only one state,” added the co-director. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything