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As filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman entered Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly pleasant scene. Similar to other Alabama's correctional institutions, the prison largely prohibits media entry, but allowed the filmmakers to film its annual community-organized barbecue. On camera, imprisoned individuals, predominantly Black, danced and smiled to live music and religious talks. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story emerged—horrific assaults, hidden stabbings, and unimaginable violence concealed from public view. Cries for help came from overheated, dirty dorms. As soon as Jarecki approached the sounds, a corrections officer stopped filming, claiming it was dangerous to speak with the men without a police escort.

“It became apparent that certain sections of the prison that we were forbidden to view,” the filmmaker recalled. “They use the idea that it’s all about safety and safety, since they don’t want you from comprehending what they’re doing. These facilities are like secret locations.”

The Revealing Film Uncovering Years of Abuse

This thwarted cookout meeting begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary made over six years. Collaboratively directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour film exposes a shockingly corrupt institution filled with unchecked abuse, forced labor, and unimaginable brutality. It chronicles inmates' tremendous struggles, under constant physical threat, to change situations declared “illegal” by the US justice department in 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Ghastly Realities

Following their abruptly terminated Easterling visit, the filmmakers connected with individuals inside the state prison system. Led by long-incarcerated organizers Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a group of insiders provided multiple years of evidence filmed on illegal mobile devices. These recordings is disturbing:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Piles of excrement
• Rotting food and blood-stained floors
• Regular officer violence
• Inmates carried out in remains pouches
• Hallways of individuals unresponsive on drugs distributed by officers

Council begins the film in five years of isolation as punishment for his activism; subsequently in filming, he is nearly killed by guards and suffers vision in an eye.

The Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Obfuscation

This violence is, the film shows, commonplace within the ADOC. As incarcerated witnesses persisted to gather evidence, the filmmakers looked into the killing of an inmate, who was beaten unrecognizably by officers inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The documentary follows the victim's parent, Sandy Ray, as she seeks answers from a recalcitrant prison authority. She learns the state’s version—that her son menaced guards with a weapon—on the television. However multiple imprisoned witnesses informed Ray’s attorney that the inmate wielded only a plastic utensil and yielded at once, only to be beaten by multiple officers anyway.

A guard, Roderick Gadson, stomped Davis’s head off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

After years of evasion, the mother met with Alabama’s “tough on crime” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who informed her that the authorities would decline to file charges. Gadson, who faced more than 20 separate lawsuits claiming brutality, was promoted. Authorities paid for his defense costs, as well as those of every guard—part of the $51m spent by the state of Alabama in the past five years to protect officers from wrongdoing lawsuits.

Compulsory Labor: A Contemporary Exploitation System

The state benefits financially from ongoing mass incarceration without oversight. The film details the shocking extent and double standard of the ADOC’s labor program, a compulsory-work system that effectively functions as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. The system supplies $450m in goods and services to the state annually for virtually no pay.

In the program, imprisoned laborers, mostly African American residents considered unsuitable for the community, make $2 a 24-hour period—the identical daily wage rate set by Alabama for imprisoned labor in the year 1927, at the height of racial segregation. They work upwards of half a day for private companies or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.

“They trust me to labor in the public, but they refuse me to grant parole to get out and return to my loved ones.”

These workers are statistically less likely to be released than those who are not, even those deemed a higher public safety risk. “That gives you an understanding of how important this free workforce is to the state, and how important it is for them to keep people locked up,” said Jarecki.

Prison-wide Protest and Continued Struggle

The Alabama Solution concludes in an incredible achievement of activism: a system-wide inmates' work stoppage demanding better conditions in 2022, organized by an activist and his co-organizer. Illegal cell phone footage reveals how prison authorities broke the protest in less than two weeks by starving prisoners en masse, choking the leader, deploying personnel to intimidate and attack others, and severing communication from organizers.

A National Problem Beyond Alabama

The protest may have failed, but the message was evident, and outside the borders of the region. Council concludes the film with a plea for change: “The things that are taking place in Alabama are happening in every region and in the public's name.”

Starting with the reported violations at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to the state of California's deployment of over a thousand incarcerated emergency responders to the danger zones of the Los Angeles fires for less than standard pay, “one observes comparable situations in the majority of states in the country,” said Jarecki.

“This isn’t only Alabama,” said the co-director. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive strategy to {everything