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As documentarians Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman entered the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they witnessed a deceptively pleasant scene. Similar to other Alabama's correctional institutions, the prison mostly prohibits media access, but permitted the filmmakers to record its annual community-organized cookout. On camera, incarcerated individuals, mostly African American, celebrated and smiled to live music and sermons. However behind the scenes, a contrasting story surfaced—horrific assaults, unreported stabbings, and unimaginable violence swept under the rug. Pleas for assistance came from sweltering, dirty dorms. As soon as the director approached the sounds, a corrections officer halted 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 view,” Jarecki recalled. “They employ the excuse that everything is about security and security, because they don’t want you from comprehending what they’re doing. These prisons are similar to black sites.”

A Stunning Film Uncovering Decades of Abuse

That thwarted barbecue meeting begins the documentary, a stunning new film produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and his partner, the feature-length film reveals a gallingly corrupt institution filled with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. The film chronicles inmates' herculean struggles, under constant danger, to improve situations declared “unconstitutional” by the US justice department in 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Horrific Realities

Following their suddenly ended prison tour, the filmmakers connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by veteran activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a network of sources supplied years of evidence recorded on illegal cell phones. The footage is disturbing:

• Vermin-ridden living spaces
• Piles of human waste
• Spoiled food and blood-stained floors
• Regular guard beatings
• Inmates removed out in remains pouches
• Hallways of men unresponsive on drugs distributed by staff

One activist starts the documentary in half a decade of solitary confinement as retribution for his organizing; subsequently in filming, he is nearly beaten to death by guards and loses vision in an eye.

The Story of Steven Davis: Brutality and Secrecy

This violence is, we learn, standard within the prison system. As imprisoned witnesses persisted to collect evidence, the filmmakers investigated the death of an inmate, who was assaulted beyond recognition by guards inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The Alabama Solution follows Davis’s parent, a family member, as she pursues answers from a recalcitrant ADOC. She discovers the state’s version—that Davis threatened guards with a knife—on the television. However several imprisoned observers told the family's attorney that Davis wielded only a plastic knife and yielded at once, only to be assaulted by multiple officers anyway.

A guard, an officer, stomped the inmate's skull off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

After three years of obfuscation, the mother spoke with Alabama’s “tough on crime” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who informed her that the authorities would not press criminal counts. Gadson, who had numerous individual legal actions alleging brutality, was promoted. The state covered for his legal bills, as well as those of every guard—part of the $51 million used by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to protect officers from wrongdoing lawsuits.

Compulsory Work: The Contemporary Exploitation System

The state profits economically from ongoing imprisonment without supervision. The film details the shocking extent and hypocrisy of the prison system's labor program, a forced-labor system that effectively functions as a modern-day version of historical bondage. This program supplies $450m in products and services to the government annually for almost no pay.

In the system, incarcerated laborers, overwhelmingly African American Alabamians deemed unfit for the community, earn $2 a 24-hour period—the identical daily wage rate set by Alabama for imprisoned workers in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. They labor upwards of half a day for private companies or government locations including the government building, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.

“They trust me to work in the public, but they don’t trust me to give me release to get out and go home to my loved ones.”

Such workers are statistically more unlikely to be released than those who are not, even those deemed a higher security threat. “This illustrates you an understanding of how important this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep people locked up,” stated the director.

Prison-wide Strike and Ongoing Struggle

The Alabama Solution culminates in an incredible feat of activism: a state-wide inmates' work stoppage demanding improved treatment in 2022, led by Council and his co-organizer. Illegal mobile footage shows how ADOC ended the protest in less than two weeks by starving prisoners collectively, assaulting Council, deploying personnel to threaten and attack others, and cutting off communication from organizers.

The National Problem Beyond One State

The protest may have failed, but the message was evident, and beyond the borders of the region. Council ends the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are occurring in Alabama are happening in every state and in your behalf.”

Starting with the reported abuses at the state of New York's a prison facility, to the state of California's deployment of over a thousand imprisoned emergency responders to the danger zones of the Los Angeles fires for less than standard pay, “you see similar situations in most jurisdictions in the country,” said the filmmaker.

“This isn’t only one state,” added the co-director. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive strategy to {everything