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When documentarians the directors and his co-director visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama's prisons, the prison largely bans journalistic access, but allowed the filmmakers to record its annual community-organized barbecue. During film, imprisoned men, mostly Black, danced and smiled to musical performances and sermons. However behind the scenes, a different story emerged—horrific beatings, hidden violent attacks, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for assistance were heard from overheated, dirty housing units. As soon as Jarecki approached the sounds, a corrections officer stopped filming, stating it was dangerous to interact with the men without a police chaperone.

“It became apparent that certain sections of the prison that we were forbidden to see,” Jarecki remembered. “They use the excuse that it’s all about safety and security, because they aim to prevent you from understanding what they’re doing. These prisons are similar to black sites.”

The Revealing Film Exposing Years of Abuse

That thwarted cookout meeting begins The Alabama Solution, a powerful new film produced over six years. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour production reveals a gallingly broken system filled with unregulated abuse, forced labor, and extreme cruelty. It documents prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under constant physical threat, to improve conditions deemed “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Horrific Realities

Following their suddenly terminated Easterling tour, the directors connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by veteran organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a network of insiders provided years of evidence filmed on illegal cell phones. These recordings is ghastly:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Heaps of human waste
• Spoiled food and blood-streaked floors
• Regular guard violence
• Men removed out in body bags
• Corridors of individuals unresponsive on drugs distributed by staff

One activist begins the film in half a decade of isolation as retribution for his organizing; later in filming, he is almost killed by guards and loses sight in one eye.

The Case of Steven Davis: Violence and Obfuscation

This brutality is, we learn, commonplace within the ADOC. While incarcerated sources continued to gather evidence, the directors investigated the killing of an inmate, who was beaten beyond recognition by guards inside the Donaldson prison in 2019. The documentary traces Davis’s parent, a family member, as she seeks answers from a uncooperative ADOC. She discovers the state’s version—that her son menaced officers with a weapon—on the news. But multiple incarcerated observers told Ray’s attorney that Davis held only a toy utensil and yielded at once, only to be beaten by four guards regardless.

One of them, an officer, stomped the inmate's head off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

After three years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray spoke with the state's “tough on crime” attorney general a state official, who informed her that the state would not press charges. The officer, who faced more than 20 individual legal actions alleging brutality, was promoted. Authorities paid for his defense costs, as well as those of all other guard—a portion of the $51m spent by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to protect staff from misconduct lawsuits.

Compulsory Work: The Contemporary Slavery Scheme

This state benefits economically from continued imprisonment without oversight. The Alabama Solution describes the shocking scope and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s work initiative, a compulsory-work system that essentially functions as a present-day version of historical bondage. This program provides $450m in products and work to the state each year for almost no pay.

In the program, incarcerated laborers, mostly Black residents considered unsuitable for the community, earn two dollars a day—the same daily wage rate established by the state for imprisoned labor in 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. They labor upwards of 12 hours for corporate entities or public sites including the government building, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and municipal offices.

“Authorities allow me to labor in the community, but they refuse me to give me release to leave and go home to my family.”

These laborers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those considered a higher public safety risk. “That gives you an understanding of how important this low-cost workforce is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to maintain people locked up,” said Jarecki.

Prison-wide Protest and Continued Struggle

The Alabama Solution concludes in an remarkable feat of organizing: a system-wide prisoners’ strike demanding improved conditions in 2022, led by an activist and his co-organizer. Illegal cell phone video reveals how ADOC ended the strike in 11 days by depriving inmates en masse, choking Council, sending personnel to threaten and attack participants, and severing contact from strike leaders.

The Country-wide Problem Beyond One State

This strike may have ended, but the lesson was clear, and outside the borders of the region. Council ends the documentary with a plea for change: “The things that are taking place in this state are happening in every region and in your behalf.”

Starting with the reported violations at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to the state of California's deployment of 1,100 imprisoned emergency responders to the frontlines of the Los Angeles wildfires for less than minimum wage, “one observes similar things in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” said Jarecki.

“This is not only Alabama,” said the co-director. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and language, and a punitive strategy to {everything