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As documentarians the directors and Charlotte Kaufman entered Easterling prison in 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful scene. Like the state's Alabama correctional institutions, the prison largely prohibits journalistic access, but permitted the crew to film its yearly community-organized barbecue. On film, imprisoned individuals, predominantly Black, celebrated and laughed to live music and sermons. But behind the scenes, a different story emerged—terrifying assaults, unreported violent attacks, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for assistance were heard from overheated, dirty housing units. As soon as Jarecki moved toward the sounds, a prison official stopped filming, stating it was unsafe to speak with the inmates without a security chaperone.

“It became apparent that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to view,” Jarecki remembered. “They use the idea that everything is about security and safety, because they don’t want you from comprehending what is occurring. These facilities are like secret locations.”

The Stunning Film Uncovering Decades of Neglect

That interrupted cookout meeting begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by the director and Kaufman, the feature-length production reveals a shockingly corrupt institution filled with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and extreme cruelty. The film chronicles inmates' tremendous efforts, under constant danger, to change situations deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Covert Footage Reveal Horrific Conditions

After their suddenly terminated Easterling tour, the filmmakers made contact with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by long-incarcerated organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a network of sources supplied years of footage recorded on contraband mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Heaps of excrement
• Rotting meals and blood-streaked surfaces
• Regular guard beatings
• Inmates carried out in body bags
• Corridors of men near-catatonic on drugs distributed by officers

Council starts the documentary in five years of isolation as punishment for his activism; later in filming, he is almost killed by officers and suffers vision in one eye.

The Story of Steven Davis: Brutality and Obfuscation

This brutality is, we learn, commonplace within the ADOC. As incarcerated sources persisted to gather proof, the filmmakers looked into the death of an inmate, who was assaulted unrecognizably by guards inside the William E Donaldson prison in October 2019. The Alabama Solution follows the victim's parent, a family member, as she seeks truth from a recalcitrant prison authority. She learns the state’s explanation—that Davis menaced officers with a knife—on the television. However multiple incarcerated witnesses told the family's attorney that the inmate wielded only a toy utensil and yielded immediately, only to be assaulted by multiple officers anyway.

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

Following years of obfuscation, the mother met with the state's “tough on crime” attorney general Steve Marshall, who informed her that the state would not press criminal counts. The officer, who faced numerous separate lawsuits alleging excessive force, was promoted. Authorities paid for his legal bills, as well as those of all other officer—part of the $51m used by the government in the past five years to defend officers from wrongdoing claims.

Compulsory Labor: The Contemporary Slavery Scheme

The state benefits economically from ongoing imprisonment without supervision. The film details the shocking scope and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s work initiative, a forced-labor arrangement that essentially functions as a modern-day mutation of chattel slavery. The system supplies $450m in products and services to the state annually for almost minimal wages.

Under the program, incarcerated laborers, mostly Black residents considered unfit for society, earn $2 a 24-hour period—the identical pay scale established by the state for imprisoned workers in 1927, at the height of racial segregation. These individuals work upwards of 12 hours for private companies or public sites including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“Authorities allow me to work in the community, but they refuse me to grant release to get out and go home to my loved ones.”

These laborers are statistically more unlikely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those deemed a greater public safety threat. “This illustrates you an understanding of how valuable this low-cost workforce is to the state, and how critical it is for them to maintain people locked up,” stated Jarecki.

Prison-wide Protest and Continued Struggle

The documentary concludes in an remarkable achievement of activism: a system-wide inmates' work stoppage calling for better conditions in 2022, led by an activist and Melvin Ray. Contraband cell phone footage reveals how ADOC ended the protest in 11 days by depriving inmates en masse, choking Council, sending personnel to threaten and attack participants, and cutting off communication from strike leaders.

The Country-wide Issue Outside Alabama

The strike may have ended, but the lesson was clear, and beyond the state of Alabama. An activist concludes the documentary with a plea for change: “The things that are occurring in this state are happening in your region and in the public's behalf.”

Starting with the documented abuses at the state of New York's a prison facility, to the state of California's use of 1,100 incarcerated emergency responders to the frontlines of the Los Angeles wildfires for below standard pay, “you see comparable situations in most states in the country,” noted Jarecki.

“This isn’t only Alabama,” added the co-director. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ policy and language, and a punitive strategy to {everything