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When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Like other Alabama prisons, the prison mostly bans media entry, but permitted the crew to record its annual volunteer-run barbecue. On film, incarcerated individuals, mostly African American, danced and smiled to musical performances and sermons. However off camera, a different narrative surfaced—terrifying assaults, unreported violent attacks, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Pleas for assistance were heard from overheated, filthy dorms. When Jarecki moved toward the sounds, a corrections officer halted recording, claiming it was dangerous to interact with the men without a police chaperone.

“It was very clear that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki recalled. “They employ the idea that everything is about security and safety, since they don’t want you from understanding what they’re doing. These facilities are similar to black sites.”

A Stunning Documentary Uncovering Years of Abuse

This thwarted barbecue meeting opens The Alabama Solution, a stunning new film made over half a decade. Co-directed by the director and Kaufman, the feature-length production reveals a shockingly broken institution rife with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable brutality. The film documents prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under ongoing danger, to change situations declared “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Covert Footage Uncover Horrific Realities

Following their suddenly terminated Easterling tour, the directors connected with men inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran activists Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council, a network of sources provided years of evidence recorded on illegal mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Heaps of excrement
• Rotting food and blood-stained surfaces
• Routine officer violence
• Inmates removed out in body bags
• Hallways of individuals unresponsive on substances sold by officers

Council begins the documentary in half a decade of isolation as retribution for his organizing; later in production, he is nearly beaten to death by guards and loses sight in one eye.

The Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Secrecy

This violence is, we learn, standard within the ADOC. As incarcerated sources persisted to gather proof, the filmmakers investigated the death of an inmate, who was beaten unrecognizably by guards inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The Alabama Solution traces Davis’s mother, a family member, as she pursues truth from a recalcitrant ADOC. The mother learns the state’s version—that her son menaced officers with a weapon—on the news. But multiple imprisoned witnesses informed the family's attorney that Davis held only a toy knife and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by four officers anyway.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, smashed Davis’s head off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

Following three years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray spoke with Alabama’s “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who told her that the authorities would decline to file criminal counts. Gadson, who had numerous individual lawsuits alleging brutality, was promoted. Authorities covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every guard—a portion of the $51 million spent by the government in the last half-decade to defend officers from wrongdoing lawsuits.

Forced Work: The Contemporary Exploitation System

This government benefits economically from ongoing mass incarceration without supervision. The film details the shocking extent and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a forced-labor system that effectively operates as a present-day version of historical bondage. The system provides $450 million in products and services to the government each year for almost minimal wages.

In the system, incarcerated laborers, overwhelmingly African American Alabamians deemed unfit for the community, make $2 a day—the same pay scale established by Alabama for incarcerated workers in the year 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. They work more than half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the government building, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and municipal offices.

“Authorities allow me to work in the public, but they don’t trust me to give me release to leave and return to my loved ones.”

Such workers are statistically less likely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those considered a higher public safety threat. “That gives you an understanding of how important this low-cost workforce is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to keep people imprisoned,” said Jarecki.

State-wide Strike and Continued Fight

The documentary culminates in an incredible achievement of activism: a state-wide prisoners’ work stoppage demanding improved treatment in October 2022, led by an activist and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone footage shows how ADOC ended the protest in less than two weeks by starving prisoners collectively, choking Council, sending personnel to threaten and beat participants, and severing communication from organizers.

The Country-wide Issue Beyond Alabama

The protest may have ended, but the message was clear, and outside the borders of Alabama. An activist concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are taking place in Alabama are taking place in your state and in your name.”

From the reported abuses at New York’s a prison facility, to California’s deployment of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for less than minimum wage, “one observes similar situations in most jurisdictions in the country,” noted the filmmaker.

“This isn’t just Alabama,” said the co-director. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and language, and a punitive approach to {everything