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When documentarians the directors and Charlotte Kaufman entered Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful scene. Similar to the state's Alabama correctional institutions, the prison largely bans media entry, but allowed the crew to record its yearly community-organized barbecue. During camera, imprisoned men, mostly Black, celebrated and laughed to musical performances and sermons. But behind the scenes, a different story emerged—terrifying assaults, hidden violent attacks, and unimaginable violence swept under the rug. Cries for help came from overheated, filthy dorms. As soon as Jarecki approached the voices, a prison official stopped recording, claiming it was unsafe to speak with the inmates without a security chaperone.

“It became apparent that there were areas of the facility that we were not allowed to view,” the filmmaker remembered. “They employ the idea that everything is about security and safety, since they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These facilities are similar to black sites.”

The Stunning Documentary Uncovering Decades of Abuse

This thwarted barbecue meeting opens The Alabama Solution, a powerful new film produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and his partner, the feature-length production reveals a gallingly broken system filled with unregulated abuse, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. It chronicles prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under constant danger, to change conditions deemed “unconstitutional” by the US justice department in 2020.

Covert Footage Reveal Ghastly Conditions

Following their abruptly terminated prison tour, the filmmakers 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 evidence filmed on illegal cell phones. These recordings is disturbing:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Piles of excrement
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked floors
• Regular officer beatings
• Inmates removed out in body bags
• Hallways of men unresponsive on substances distributed by staff

One activist starts the film in half a decade of isolation as retribution for his organizing; subsequently in production, he is almost killed by guards and loses vision in an eye.

The Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Obfuscation

Such violence is, we learn, commonplace within the ADOC. While imprisoned witnesses persisted to collect proof, the directors investigated the killing of an inmate, who was beaten beyond recognition by officers inside the Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The documentary traces Davis’s parent, a family member, as she seeks answers from a recalcitrant prison authority. The mother discovers the state’s explanation—that Davis menaced guards with a knife—on the news. However multiple incarcerated witnesses informed the family's lawyer that Davis wielded only a plastic utensil and yielded immediately, only to be assaulted by multiple guards anyway.

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

Following years of evasion, the mother spoke with Alabama’s “tough on crime” top lawyer a state official, who informed her that the state would decline to file charges. Gadson, who had numerous separate lawsuits claiming brutality, was promoted. The state covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—a portion of the $51 million spent by the state of Alabama in the past five years to defend officers from wrongdoing claims.

Compulsory Labor: A Contemporary Exploitation Scheme

This government profits economically from continued imprisonment without oversight. The film details the alarming scope and double standard of the ADOC’s work initiative, a forced-labor arrangement that essentially functions as a present-day version of chattel slavery. The system supplies $450m in goods and services to the government each year for virtually no pay.

In the system, incarcerated workers, mostly African American Alabamians considered unsuitable for the community, make two dollars a 24-hour period—the same pay scale set by the state for imprisoned workers in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. These individuals labor upwards of 12 hours for private companies or government locations including the government building, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

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

Such workers are numerically more unlikely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those considered a higher security risk. “This illustrates you an understanding of how important this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to maintain individuals imprisoned,” said the director.

State-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The documentary culminates in an remarkable achievement of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ strike demanding improved treatment in October 2022, organized by Council and his co-organizer. Illegal cell phone video shows how ADOC ended the strike in 11 days by depriving inmates en masse, choking Council, deploying soldiers to intimidate and beat others, and cutting off communication from organizers.

A National Problem Outside One State

This strike may have failed, but the message was evident, and outside the state of Alabama. An activist ends the documentary with a call to action: “The abuses that are occurring in Alabama are happening in every state and in your name.”

From the reported abuses at the state of New York's a prison facility, to the state of California's use of over a thousand imprisoned emergency responders to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for less than minimum wage, “you see similar things in most jurisdictions in the union,” noted Jarecki.

“This is not only one state,” added Kaufman. “There is a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ policy and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything