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As filmmakers the directors and Charlotte Kaufman visited the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama's prisons, Easterling mostly bans media access, but allowed the crew to record its yearly volunteer-run barbecue. During film, incarcerated individuals, predominantly Black, danced and smiled to musical performances and religious talks. But off camera, a contrasting story surfaced—horrific beatings, hidden violent attacks, and indescribable violence swept under the rug. Cries for assistance came from overheated, dirty housing units. When Jarecki moved toward the sounds, a prison official halted recording, claiming it was unsafe to interact with the inmates without a security escort.

“It was very clear that certain sections of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki remembered. “They employ the idea that it’s all about safety and security, since they aim to prevent you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are like black sites.”

The Stunning Documentary Exposing Decades of Abuse

This interrupted cookout meeting begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new film made over half a decade. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the feature-length production exposes a gallingly corrupt institution filled with unregulated abuse, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. It chronicles prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under constant danger, to improve situations deemed “illegal” by the US justice department in the year 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Horrific Realities

After their abruptly terminated prison visit, the filmmakers made contact with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by veteran activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a network of sources supplied years of footage filmed on illegal mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Heaps of human waste
• Spoiled food and blood-streaked surfaces
• Routine guard beatings
• Men removed out in body bags
• Corridors of individuals unresponsive on substances sold by staff

Council starts the documentary in half a decade of isolation as retribution for his activism; later in production, he is nearly beaten to death by officers and suffers sight in one eye.

A Case of Steven Davis: Brutality and Secrecy

This violence is, we learn, standard within the prison system. While imprisoned witnesses continued to collect proof, the directors investigated the killing of Steven Davis, who was beaten beyond recognition by guards inside the William E Donaldson prison in October 2019. The documentary follows the victim's parent, Sandy Ray, as she seeks truth from a recalcitrant ADOC. The mother learns the state’s version—that her son threatened officers with a knife—on the television. But several incarcerated observers told the family's lawyer that the inmate wielded only a toy utensil and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by four officers regardless.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, smashed Davis’s head off the concrete floor “like a basketball.”

Following years of evasion, Sandy Ray met with Alabama’s “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who told her that the state would decline to file charges. Gadson, who had more than 20 separate lawsuits claiming brutality, was given a higher rank. Authorities covered for his legal bills, as well as those of every officer—a portion of the $51m used by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to defend staff from misconduct lawsuits.

Forced Work: A Contemporary Slavery System

This government profits economically from continued mass incarceration without oversight. The Alabama Solution details the shocking scope and double standard of the ADOC’s labor program, a compulsory-work arrangement that effectively operates as a present-day version of chattel slavery. This program provides $450m in goods and services to the state annually for almost minimal wages.

In the system, incarcerated laborers, overwhelmingly Black Alabamians considered unfit for society, make $2 a 24-hour period—the same pay scale established by the state for imprisoned workers in the year 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. They 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 work in the public, but they refuse me to give me parole to leave and go home to my loved ones.”

These workers are numerically less likely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those considered a higher security risk. “That gives you an understanding of how important this free labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep people imprisoned,” stated Jarecki.

Prison-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The Alabama Solution concludes in an remarkable feat of activism: a system-wide inmates' work stoppage calling for better conditions in October 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Contraband mobile footage reveals how prison authorities broke the protest in 11 days by depriving prisoners en masse, assaulting the leader, sending personnel to intimidate and attack participants, and cutting off contact from organizers.

A Country-wide Issue Outside One State

This protest may have failed, but the message was evident, and beyond the borders of Alabama. Council concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are occurring in Alabama are happening in your region and in your name.”

From the reported violations at the state of New York's a prison facility, to California’s deployment of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the danger zones of the Los Angeles wildfires for less than standard pay, “one observes similar situations in most states in the country,” said Jarecki.

“This is not just one state,” said Kaufman. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ policy and rhetoric, and a punitive approach to {everything