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As filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman entered the Easterling facility in 2019, they witnessed a deceptively cheerful atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama correctional institutions, the prison largely bans journalistic access, but allowed the crew to record its yearly community-organized barbecue. On camera, imprisoned individuals, mostly African American, danced and laughed to live music and sermons. But off camera, a contrasting narrative surfaced—horrific assaults, hidden violent attacks, and unimaginable violence concealed from public view. Cries for help came from sweltering, filthy housing units. When the director moved toward the sounds, a prison official halted filming, claiming it was dangerous to speak with the men without a security escort.

“It became apparent that certain sections of the prison that we were forbidden to see,” the filmmaker remembered. “They use the idea that everything is about safety and safety, since they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These facilities are similar to black sites.”

A Stunning Documentary Exposing Decades of Abuse

This thwarted barbecue meeting opens the documentary, a powerful new documentary made over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the two-hour production reveals a shockingly broken system rife with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable brutality. The film documents inmates' tremendous efforts, under ongoing physical threat, to change situations declared “unconstitutional” by the US justice department in 2020.

Secret Footage Reveal Ghastly Conditions

After their suddenly terminated Easterling tour, the directors connected with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by veteran organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a network of sources supplied years of footage filmed on illegal cell phones. The footage is disturbing:

• Rat-infested cells
• Piles of human waste
• Spoiled food and blood-streaked floors
• Routine guard beatings
• Inmates removed out in body bags
• Corridors of individuals near-catatonic on substances distributed by officers

One activist starts the film in half a decade of isolation as retribution for his organizing; later in filming, he is nearly beaten to death by officers and loses vision in an eye.

A Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Obfuscation

Such brutality is, the film shows, commonplace within the ADOC. While imprisoned sources persisted to gather proof, the filmmakers investigated the death of Steven Davis, who was assaulted beyond recognition by officers inside the Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The Alabama Solution follows Davis’s mother, a family member, as she seeks truth from a recalcitrant ADOC. She learns the state’s explanation—that her son threatened officers with a weapon—on the television. However several imprisoned observers informed Ray’s lawyer that Davis wielded only a toy utensil and yielded immediately, only to be beaten by four officers anyway.

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

Following years of evasion, Sandy Ray spoke with the state's “law-and-order” attorney general Steve Marshall, who informed her that the authorities would not press criminal counts. The officer, who faced numerous individual legal actions alleging excessive force, was promoted. The state paid for his defense costs, as well as those of all other guard—part of the $51m used by the state of Alabama in the past five years to defend staff from misconduct claims.

Compulsory Work: A Contemporary Slavery System

This government benefits financially from ongoing mass incarceration without supervision. The film details the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s work initiative, a compulsory-work system that effectively operates as a modern-day mutation of historical bondage. The system provides $450 million in products and work to the state annually for almost minimal wages.

Under the system, imprisoned laborers, mostly Black residents deemed unfit for society, earn two dollars a day—the identical daily wage rate established by the state for imprisoned labor in 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. They labor more than 12 hours for corporate entities or government locations including the government building, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.

“Authorities allow me to work in the community, but they don’t trust me to grant release to get out and return to my loved ones.”

Such workers are statistically less likely to be paroled than those who are not, even those considered a greater public safety threat. “This illustrates you an idea of how valuable this low-cost workforce is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to maintain individuals locked up,” stated the director.

Prison-wide Protest and Ongoing Struggle

The Alabama Solution concludes in an remarkable feat of activism: a system-wide inmates' strike demanding better treatment in 2022, organized by Council and his co-organizer. Illegal cell phone video reveals how ADOC broke the protest in 11 days by depriving inmates en masse, assaulting the leader, sending personnel to threaten and beat others, and cutting off contact from strike leaders.

The National Problem Beyond One State

This strike may have ended, but the lesson was evident, and outside the borders of Alabama. Council ends the film with a plea for change: “The things that are occurring in Alabama are happening in every state and in your name.”

From the documented abuses at the state of New York's a prison facility, to California’s use of over a thousand incarcerated firefighters to the danger zones of the Los Angeles fires for below minimum wage, “one observes similar situations in most states in the country,” said the filmmaker.

“This is not only one state,” said the co-director. “There is a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ policy and language, and a punitive approach to {everything