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As documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they witnessed a deceptively cheerful scene. Like other Alabama's correctional institutions, the prison largely bans journalistic access, but allowed the filmmakers to film its annual community-organized barbecue. On camera, imprisoned men, mostly Black, danced and laughed to musical performances and religious talks. But off camera, a contrasting narrative surfaced—terrifying assaults, hidden violent attacks, and unimaginable violence swept under the rug. Cries for help came from overheated, dirty dorms. When the director approached the voices, a prison official halted filming, stating it was dangerous to interact with the inmates without a security chaperone.

“It became apparent that certain sections of the facility that we were not allowed to view,” the filmmaker remembered. “They employ the idea that it’s all about safety and security, because they don’t want you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are similar to black sites.”

The Stunning Documentary Exposing Years of Neglect

That thwarted cookout event begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary made over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the feature-length film reveals a gallingly corrupt system filled with unregulated mistreatment, compulsory work, and unimaginable cruelty. The film chronicles prisoners’ herculean efforts, under ongoing danger, to improve situations declared “illegal” by the US justice department in the year 2020.

Secret Recordings Uncover Horrific Conditions

Following their suddenly terminated prison tour, the filmmakers connected with individuals inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a network of insiders supplied multiple years of footage recorded on contraband cell phones. These recordings is disturbing:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Piles of human waste
• Spoiled meals and blood-stained floors
• Routine guard beatings
• Inmates removed out in body bags
• Corridors of individuals near-catatonic on drugs sold by officers

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

The Story of Steven Davis: Brutality and Obfuscation

Such violence is, we learn, standard within the ADOC. As imprisoned witnesses continued to collect proof, the directors investigated the killing of an inmate, who was assaulted beyond recognition by officers inside the Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The Alabama Solution follows Davis’s mother, Sandy Ray, as she seeks answers from a recalcitrant prison authority. The mother discovers the official version—that her son threatened officers with a weapon—on the television. But multiple incarcerated observers told the family's lawyer that the inmate wielded only a toy utensil and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by four guards anyway.

A guard, an officer, smashed the inmate's skull off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

Following years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray spoke with the state's “law-and-order” attorney general a state official, who told her that the state would decline to file criminal counts. The officer, who had more than 20 individual lawsuits claiming brutality, was promoted. Authorities paid for his legal bills, as well as those of all other officer—a portion of the $51 million spent by the government in the last half-decade to defend officers from wrongdoing claims.

Forced Labor: A Contemporary Slavery Scheme

The state benefits economically from ongoing mass incarceration without oversight. The film details the alarming scope and double standard of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work system that essentially functions as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. This program provides $450 million in goods and services to the state each year for virtually minimal wages.

In the system, imprisoned laborers, mostly Black Alabamians considered unsuitable for the community, make $2 a day—the identical pay scale set by Alabama for incarcerated labor in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. These individuals work more than half a day for private companies or public sites including the government building, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and municipal offices.

“They trust me to labor in the community, but they refuse me to give me parole to get out and go home to my family.”

Such laborers are statistically less likely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those deemed a higher public safety threat. “That gives you an idea of how valuable this low-cost labor is to the state, and how critical it is for them to keep people imprisoned,” said Jarecki.

State-wide Strike and Ongoing Struggle

The Alabama Solution culminates in an remarkable achievement of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ strike calling for better treatment in October 2022, organized by an activist and his co-organizer. Contraband mobile video shows how ADOC ended the strike in 11 days by depriving inmates en masse, assaulting the leader, deploying personnel to intimidate and attack participants, and severing contact from strike leaders.

The Country-wide Issue Beyond Alabama

This strike may have ended, but the lesson was clear, and outside the borders of Alabama. An activist ends the film with a plea for change: “The things that are taking place in this state are taking place in every state and in the public's name.”

Starting with the documented violations at the state of New York's a prison facility, to the state of California's deployment of over a thousand imprisoned firefighters to the frontlines of the Los Angeles wildfires for below standard pay, “you see similar situations in most jurisdictions in the country,” noted the filmmaker.

“This is not just one state,” added the co-director. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive strategy to {everything