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As documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited Easterling prison in 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful scene. Like other Alabama's prisons, Easterling largely bans journalistic access, but allowed the crew to record its annual community-organized cookout. During camera, imprisoned individuals, mostly African American, celebrated and laughed to live music and religious talks. However behind the scenes, a different narrative surfaced—terrifying assaults, hidden stabbings, and unimaginable violence concealed from public view. Pleas for assistance were heard from sweltering, filthy housing units. When Jarecki moved toward the sounds, a corrections officer halted recording, stating it was unsafe to speak with the inmates without a police escort.

“It was very clear that there were areas of the facility that we were forbidden to see,” the filmmaker recalled. “They use the excuse that it’s all about security and security, since they don’t want you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are like black sites.”

The Stunning Film Exposing Years of Neglect

This interrupted barbecue event begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new film produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by the director and Kaufman, the feature-length film exposes a shockingly corrupt institution filled with unregulated abuse, compulsory work, and extreme cruelty. The film documents inmates' herculean struggles, under ongoing danger, to improve situations declared “illegal” by the US justice department in the year 2020.

Secret Footage Reveal Horrific Conditions

After their suddenly ended prison visit, the directors connected with men inside the state prison system. Guided by long-incarcerated activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a network of sources provided years of evidence recorded on contraband mobile devices. These recordings is ghastly:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Heaps of excrement
• Spoiled food and blood-stained floors
• Regular officer violence
• Men carried out in body bags
• Hallways of men near-catatonic on substances distributed by staff

Council begins the documentary in half a decade of solitary confinement as punishment for his activism; subsequently in filming, he is almost killed by guards and suffers sight in one eye.

A Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Obfuscation

Such brutality is, the film shows, commonplace within the ADOC. As imprisoned sources persisted to collect proof, the filmmakers looked into the killing of an inmate, who was assaulted unrecognizably by officers inside the Donaldson prison in 2019. The documentary follows Davis’s parent, Sandy Ray, as she pursues answers from a recalcitrant ADOC. The mother discovers the state’s version—that her son threatened officers with a weapon—on the television. However several incarcerated witnesses told Ray’s attorney that Davis held only a plastic utensil and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by four guards anyway.

One of them, an officer, stomped Davis’s skull off the concrete floor “repeatedly.”

Following three years of evasion, Sandy Ray met with Alabama’s “law-and-order” attorney general Steve Marshall, who informed her that the authorities would not press charges. Gadson, who faced more than 20 separate lawsuits claiming brutality, was promoted. The state covered for his legal bills, as well as those of every officer—part of the $51m used by the government in the last half-decade to defend staff from wrongdoing lawsuits.

Compulsory Labor: A Modern-Day Exploitation System

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

In the system, incarcerated workers, overwhelmingly Black Alabamians deemed unsuitable for society, make $2 a day—the identical pay scale established by Alabama for imprisoned workers in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. These individuals labor upwards of half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

“They trust me to labor in the public, but they refuse me to grant parole to leave and go home to my loved ones.”

These laborers are statistically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those considered a higher security risk. “This illustrates you an idea of how valuable this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to maintain individuals locked up,” stated Jarecki.

State-wide Strike and Continued Fight

The documentary concludes in an incredible feat of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ work stoppage demanding improved conditions in October 2022, led by Council and his co-organizer. Illegal cell phone video shows how prison authorities ended the protest in 11 days by depriving prisoners en masse, assaulting Council, sending personnel to threaten and attack participants, and severing communication from strike leaders.

The National Issue Beyond One State

This protest may have failed, but the message was evident, and outside the state of Alabama. Council ends the documentary with a call to action: “The abuses that are taking place in this state are taking place in your region and in the public's name.”

Starting with the documented abuses at the state of New York's a prison facility, to California’s deployment of 1,100 incarcerated firefighters to the frontlines of the LA fires for less than minimum wage, “you see similar things in the majority of states in the country,” said Jarecki.

“This is not only one state,” added the co-director. “There is a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything