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When documentarians the directors and Charlotte Kaufman entered the Easterling facility in 2019, they encountered a deceptively cheerful scene. Similar to the state's Alabama prisons, the prison mostly bans journalistic access, but allowed the crew to record its annual community-organized cookout. On film, incarcerated individuals, predominantly African American, celebrated and laughed to musical performances and religious talks. But behind the scenes, a different story emerged—horrific beatings, unreported violent attacks, and unimaginable brutality swept under the rug. Pleas for help came from sweltering, dirty housing units. As soon as Jarecki moved toward the voices, a prison official stopped recording, stating it was unsafe to speak with the inmates without a security escort.

“It was very clear that certain sections of the facility that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki remembered. “They employ the idea that it’s all about security and security, since they aim to prevent you from comprehending what they’re doing. These facilities are like secret locations.”

A Revealing Film Exposing Years of Neglect

That thwarted cookout event begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary produced over six years. Collaboratively directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour film reveals a gallingly broken institution filled with unregulated abuse, compulsory work, and extreme brutality. The film chronicles prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under ongoing danger, to change situations deemed “illegal” by the US justice department in 2020.

Covert Recordings Uncover Ghastly Realities

After their abruptly terminated Easterling visit, the filmmakers connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by long-incarcerated activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a network of insiders provided years of evidence filmed on illegal mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Piles of human waste
• Rotting food and blood-stained surfaces
• Regular guard violence
• Men carried out in remains pouches
• Hallways of men near-catatonic on drugs sold by officers

Council starts the film in five years of solitary confinement as punishment for his activism; later in production, he is nearly killed by officers and suffers vision in one eye.

A Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Obfuscation

This brutality is, we learn, standard within the prison system. While incarcerated witnesses persisted to collect proof, the filmmakers investigated the death of Steven Davis, who was beaten unrecognizably by officers inside the William E Donaldson prison in 2019. The documentary follows the victim's parent, Sandy Ray, as she pursues truth from a uncooperative ADOC. She learns the state’s explanation—that Davis menaced guards with a weapon—on the television. But several imprisoned witnesses informed Ray’s attorney that Davis held only a plastic knife and surrendered immediately, only to be beaten by four guards regardless.

A guard, Roderick Gadson, stomped the inmate's skull off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

Following years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray met with the state's “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who told her that the state would decline to file charges. Gadson, who had numerous separate legal actions claiming excessive force, was given a higher rank. Authorities paid for his legal bills, as well as those of all other officer—a portion of the $51 million used by the government in the past five years to protect officers from misconduct lawsuits.

Compulsory Work: The Modern-Day Exploitation System

This government benefits financially from ongoing imprisonment without supervision. The Alabama Solution describes the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a forced-labor system that effectively functions as a modern-day version of historical bondage. The system supplies $450m in goods and services to the government annually for virtually minimal wages.

In the system, imprisoned laborers, overwhelmingly Black residents considered unfit for society, earn two dollars a day—the identical daily wage rate established by the state for imprisoned labor in 1927, at the height of racial segregation. They work more than 12 hours for private companies 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 release to get out and return to my loved ones.”

These laborers are statistically less likely to be released than those who are not, even those considered a greater public safety risk. “That gives you an understanding of how valuable this low-cost workforce is to the state, and how critical it is for them to maintain individuals locked up,” stated the director.

State-wide Strike and Ongoing Fight

The Alabama Solution culminates in an remarkable achievement of organizing: a state-wide prisoners’ strike calling for better conditions in 2022, organized by an activist and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone footage reveals how prison authorities ended the strike in 11 days by depriving prisoners collectively, choking Council, sending soldiers to intimidate and beat participants, and severing communication from strike leaders.

The National Issue Beyond Alabama

This protest may have failed, but the lesson was clear, and beyond the borders of the region. Council concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The abuses that are taking place in this state are happening in your region and in the public's behalf.”

Starting with the documented violations at New York’s a prison facility, to California’s deployment of 1,100 imprisoned emergency responders to the danger zones of the Los Angeles fires for less than minimum wage, “one observes comparable things in most jurisdictions in the union,” noted the filmmaker.

“This is not only one state,” said the co-director. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and language, and a retributive approach to {everything