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As filmmakers the directors and his co-director visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a deceptively pleasant atmosphere. Like the state's Alabama's correctional institutions, Easterling largely prohibits media access, but allowed the filmmakers to film its annual volunteer-run barbecue. On film, incarcerated men, mostly African American, danced and smiled to musical performances and religious talks. But behind the scenes, a contrasting narrative emerged—horrific beatings, hidden stabbings, and unimaginable brutality swept under the rug. Pleas for help were heard from sweltering, filthy dorms. As soon as the director approached the voices, a prison official stopped filming, claiming it was unsafe to interact with the men without a police chaperone.

“It became apparent that there were areas of the facility that we were forbidden to see,” Jarecki remembered. “They use the excuse that it’s all about security and security, since they don’t want you from comprehending what they’re doing. These facilities are like black sites.”

The Stunning Film Uncovering Years of Abuse

That thwarted barbecue meeting opens The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary made over half a decade. Co-directed by the director and Kaufman, the two-hour film exposes a gallingly corrupt institution filled with unchecked abuse, forced labor, and extreme cruelty. The film documents inmates' herculean efforts, under constant danger, to change situations deemed “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Covert Recordings Uncover Ghastly Conditions

After their abruptly terminated Easterling visit, the filmmakers connected with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by long-incarcerated activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a group of insiders provided multiple years of footage filmed on contraband cell phones. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Piles of excrement
• Rotting meals and blood-stained surfaces
• Routine guard violence
• Inmates removed out in remains pouches
• Hallways of individuals unresponsive on drugs sold by staff

One activist starts the documentary in five years of solitary confinement as punishment for his organizing; subsequently in production, he is nearly beaten to death by officers and loses sight in one eye.

The Case of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy

Such violence is, we learn, commonplace within the ADOC. While incarcerated witnesses continued to gather evidence, the directors looked into the killing of Steven Davis, who was beaten beyond recognition by guards inside the Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The Alabama Solution follows the victim's parent, Sandy Ray, as she pursues truth from a recalcitrant prison authority. The mother learns the state’s explanation—that her son threatened officers with a knife—on the television. But several imprisoned witnesses informed the family's attorney that the inmate wielded only a plastic knife and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by multiple guards regardless.

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

After three years of obfuscation, the mother met with the state's “tough on crime” attorney general a state official, who told her that the authorities would not press criminal counts. Gadson, who faced numerous separate legal actions claiming brutality, was given a higher rank. Authorities covered for his legal bills, as well as those of every officer—part of the $51 million spent by the government in the past five years to protect officers from misconduct lawsuits.

Forced Labor: The Contemporary Exploitation System

The government benefits economically from continued mass incarceration without oversight. The Alabama Solution details the shocking scope and hypocrisy of the prison system's labor program, a compulsory-work system that effectively functions as a present-day version of chattel slavery. The system provides $450m in goods and work to the government annually for almost no pay.

Under the program, incarcerated laborers, mostly African American residents deemed unsuitable for the community, make two dollars a 24-hour period—the identical daily wage rate established by the state for incarcerated labor in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. They labor upwards of half a day for private companies or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“They trust me to work in the public, but they don’t trust me to grant parole to leave and return to my loved ones.”

These laborers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those considered a higher security risk. “This illustrates you an idea of how valuable this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep people locked up,” stated Jarecki.

Prison-wide Strike and Continued Fight

The documentary concludes in an remarkable feat of organizing: a system-wide prisoners’ work stoppage calling for improved conditions in October 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Illegal mobile video shows how ADOC broke the strike in less than two weeks by starving prisoners collectively, choking Council, sending soldiers to intimidate and attack others, and cutting off communication from organizers.

A Country-wide Issue Outside Alabama

The protest may have ended, but the lesson was evident, and outside the borders of the region. Council ends the documentary with a plea for change: “The things that are occurring in Alabama are happening in your state and in your behalf.”

Starting with the documented abuses 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 less than minimum wage, “you see comparable situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” noted the filmmaker.

“This is not just one state,” said Kaufman. “There is a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything