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When documentarians the directors and Charlotte Kaufman visited the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly cheerful scene. Like other Alabama's prisons, Easterling largely bans journalistic access, but allowed the filmmakers to film its annual volunteer-run barbecue. During camera, incarcerated individuals, mostly Black, danced and smiled to musical performances and religious talks. But off camera, a different story surfaced—horrific assaults, unreported stabbings, and unimaginable brutality concealed from public view. Pleas for assistance were heard from sweltering, filthy dorms. As soon as Jarecki moved toward the sounds, a prison official halted filming, claiming it was unsafe to speak with the inmates without a police chaperone.

“It became apparent that certain sections of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” the filmmaker recalled. “They employ the excuse that everything is about security and security, since they aim to prevent you from understanding what they’re doing. These prisons are similar to black sites.”

A Revealing Film Exposing Decades of Neglect

That thwarted cookout meeting begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary produced over six years. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and his partner, the feature-length film exposes a shockingly broken system filled with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and extreme brutality. The film chronicles inmates' herculean struggles, under constant physical threat, to change situations declared “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Secret Recordings Reveal Horrific Realities

After their suddenly ended Easterling visit, the directors connected with men inside the state prison system. Guided by long-incarcerated activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a group of sources provided years of footage recorded on illegal cell phones. The footage is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden living spaces
• Piles of excrement
• Rotting food and blood-stained floors
• Routine guard beatings
• Men removed out in body bags
• Hallways of men unresponsive on drugs sold by staff

Council starts the documentary in five years of solitary confinement as punishment for his activism; later in production, he is nearly beaten to death by guards and suffers vision in an eye.

The Story of One Inmate: Violence and Obfuscation

Such brutality is, the film shows, commonplace within the prison system. As imprisoned sources persisted to gather proof, the filmmakers looked into the killing of an inmate, who was assaulted unrecognizably by officers inside the Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The documentary follows Davis’s parent, a family member, as she seeks truth from a recalcitrant prison authority. She learns the official explanation—that Davis menaced guards with a knife—on the news. However several imprisoned observers informed the family's lawyer that the inmate held only a toy knife and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by multiple guards regardless.

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

Following three years of evasion, Sandy Ray met with Alabama’s “tough on crime” attorney general a state official, who informed her that the authorities would not press criminal counts. Gadson, who had more than 20 separate lawsuits claiming brutality, was promoted. Authorities covered for his legal bills, as well as those of all other guard—a portion of the $51m used by the government in the last half-decade to defend officers from wrongdoing claims.

Forced Labor: The Modern-Day Slavery System

The state benefits economically from ongoing mass incarceration without supervision. The film describes the shocking extent and double standard of the ADOC’s work initiative, a compulsory-work arrangement that effectively functions as a modern-day version of historical bondage. The system provides $450 million in goods and work to the state annually for almost no pay.

In the program, imprisoned laborers, mostly African American Alabamians deemed unsuitable for the community, earn $2 a 24-hour period—the same pay scale set by Alabama for imprisoned labor in 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. These individuals labor upwards of half a day for corporate entities or public sites including the government building, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and municipal offices.

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

Such laborers are statistically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are not, even those deemed a higher public safety threat. “That gives you an idea of how important this free labor is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to maintain individuals imprisoned,” stated the director.

State-wide Strike and Ongoing Struggle

The documentary culminates in an incredible feat of organizing: a system-wide inmates' work stoppage demanding better conditions in 2022, led by Council and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone video shows how ADOC broke the strike in 11 days by depriving prisoners collectively, choking the leader, deploying soldiers to threaten and attack others, and cutting off communication from organizers.

A Country-wide Issue Beyond Alabama

This strike may have ended, but the message was evident, and outside the borders of the region. Council ends the documentary with a plea for change: “The abuses that are taking place in Alabama are happening in every region and in your name.”

Starting with the documented violations at New York’s Rikers Island, to California’s use of over a thousand imprisoned firefighters to the danger zones of the Los Angeles wildfires for below standard pay, “one observes similar situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the country,” said the filmmaker.

“This isn’t only Alabama,” added the co-director. “There is a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and rhetoric, and a retributive strategy to {everything