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When documentarians the directors and Charlotte Kaufman entered the Easterling facility in 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful scene. Like other Alabama prisons, Easterling mostly prohibits media entry, but allowed the filmmakers to record its annual volunteer-run barbecue. During film, imprisoned individuals, predominantly African American, danced and smiled to live music and religious talks. However behind the scenes, a different narrative emerged—terrifying beatings, hidden stabbings, and unimaginable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for help came from overheated, filthy dorms. As soon as Jarecki approached the sounds, a corrections officer halted recording, claiming it was unsafe to speak with the men without a security chaperone.

“It became apparent 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 safety, because they aim to prevent you from understanding what they’re doing. These facilities are like secret locations.”

A Stunning Documentary Exposing Years of Abuse

This thwarted barbecue meeting begins The Alabama Solution, a powerful new film produced over six years. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the feature-length film reveals a shockingly broken institution filled with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable brutality. The film chronicles prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under constant danger, to change conditions declared “illegal” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Secret Footage Reveal Horrific Realities

Following their abruptly ended Easterling tour, the filmmakers connected with individuals inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran activists Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council, a group of sources supplied years of footage filmed on illegal mobile devices. These recordings is disturbing:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Heaps of human waste
• Rotting meals and blood-streaked floors
• Routine guard violence
• Men carried out in body bags
• Corridors of individuals unresponsive on drugs distributed by officers

One activist starts the documentary in five years of isolation as retribution for his organizing; later in production, he is nearly beaten to death by officers and loses sight in one eye.

The Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy

Such brutality is, the film shows, standard within the ADOC. As incarcerated witnesses continued to gather evidence, the filmmakers looked into the death of Steven Davis, who was beaten unrecognizably by officers inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The documentary traces the victim's parent, Sandy Ray, as she pursues truth from a uncooperative ADOC. The mother learns the official explanation—that Davis menaced guards with a weapon—on the news. However multiple incarcerated observers told the family's lawyer that the inmate held only a plastic utensil and surrendered immediately, only to be beaten by four guards anyway.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, smashed the inmate's head off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

Following three years of obfuscation, the mother met with Alabama’s “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who informed her that the state would decline to file charges. The officer, who had more than 20 separate lawsuits alleging brutality, was given a higher rank. Authorities covered for his legal bills, as well as those of every officer—part of the $51 million used by the state of Alabama in the past five years to protect officers from misconduct claims.

Forced Labor: The Contemporary Exploitation System

The government profits economically from continued imprisonment without supervision. The film details the alarming extent and double standard of the ADOC’s labor program, a compulsory-work arrangement that essentially functions as a present-day mutation of chattel slavery. This program supplies $450m in goods and work to the state annually for virtually no pay.

In the system, incarcerated laborers, overwhelmingly Black residents considered unfit for the community, earn two dollars a day—the identical daily wage rate established by the state for incarcerated labor in 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. These individuals labor upwards of half a day for private companies or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“Authorities allow me to labor in the public, but they refuse me to give me parole to leave 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 greater public safety threat. “This illustrates you an idea of how important this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep people locked up,” said Jarecki.

State-wide Protest and Continued Struggle

The documentary culminates in an remarkable achievement of activism: a state-wide prisoners’ work stoppage calling for better treatment in 2022, organized by Council and his co-organizer. Illegal mobile footage shows how prison authorities ended the strike in 11 days by depriving prisoners collectively, choking Council, sending personnel to intimidate and beat participants, and severing contact from strike leaders.

The National Issue Beyond Alabama

This protest may have failed, but the lesson was evident, and outside the state of the region. Council concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are occurring in this state are taking place in your region and in your behalf.”

From the reported abuses at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to California’s use of over a thousand imprisoned emergency responders to the danger zones of the LA fires for below standard pay, “you see similar situations in most jurisdictions in the country,” said Jarecki.

“This is not just Alabama,” said Kaufman. “There is a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything