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When filmmakers the directors and Charlotte Kaufman visited the Easterling facility in 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Like the state's Alabama correctional institutions, Easterling mostly prohibits media access, but allowed the crew to record its annual volunteer-run cookout. On film, imprisoned individuals, predominantly Black, celebrated and smiled to live music and religious talks. However behind the scenes, a contrasting narrative surfaced—horrific beatings, hidden violent attacks, and unimaginable violence swept under the rug. Cries for assistance were heard from sweltering, dirty dorms. As soon as the director approached the sounds, a prison official halted filming, stating it was unsafe to speak with the men without a police chaperone.

“It was very clear that certain sections of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki recalled. “They employ the idea that it’s all about safety and safety, because they aim to prevent you from comprehending what they’re doing. These facilities are similar to secret locations.”

The Stunning Documentary Uncovering Decades of Abuse

That interrupted cookout event begins The Alabama Solution, a powerful new documentary made over six years. Co-directed by the director and Kaufman, the two-hour film exposes a gallingly corrupt institution rife with unchecked abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable cruelty. It documents inmates' herculean efforts, under constant danger, to improve conditions deemed “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Horrific Conditions

After their abruptly ended Easterling visit, the filmmakers connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by veteran activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a group of insiders supplied years of footage filmed on illegal cell phones. The footage is disturbing:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Piles of excrement
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked floors
• Regular officer beatings
• Men carried out in remains pouches
• Corridors of men near-catatonic on substances sold by officers

Council begins the film in half a decade of isolation as punishment for his organizing; subsequently in filming, he is almost beaten to death by officers and suffers sight in one eye.

A Case of One Inmate: Brutality and Obfuscation

This violence is, the film shows, standard within the ADOC. As incarcerated witnesses persisted to collect evidence, the filmmakers investigated the death of an inmate, who was beaten unrecognizably by guards inside the William E Donaldson prison in October 2019. The Alabama Solution follows the victim's parent, Sandy Ray, as she seeks answers from a recalcitrant prison authority. The mother discovers the state’s version—that Davis menaced guards with a knife—on the news. But multiple incarcerated witnesses informed the family's attorney that Davis held only a plastic utensil and yielded at once, only to be assaulted by multiple guards regardless.

One of them, an officer, smashed the inmate's skull off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

After years of obfuscation, the mother met with the state's “law-and-order” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who informed her that the state would not press criminal counts. Gadson, who had numerous separate lawsuits alleging excessive force, was given a higher rank. Authorities paid for his legal bills, as well as those of every guard—a portion of the $51m spent by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to defend officers from wrongdoing lawsuits.

Forced Labor: A Contemporary Slavery System

The government benefits economically from continued mass incarceration without supervision. The Alabama Solution describes the shocking extent and double standard of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work system that effectively operates as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. The system supplies $450m in goods and work to the state annually for almost minimal wages.

Under the program, incarcerated workers, mostly African American residents considered unsuitable for society, earn two dollars a day—the identical daily wage rate set by Alabama for incarcerated workers in the year 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. These individuals labor more than half a day for private companies or public sites including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

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

Such laborers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those considered a greater security threat. “That gives you an understanding of how valuable this low-cost workforce is to the state, and how important it is for them to keep individuals locked up,” stated Jarecki.

State-wide Protest and Continued Fight

The Alabama Solution culminates in an remarkable achievement of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ work stoppage demanding improved conditions in October 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Contraband cell phone footage reveals how ADOC ended the protest in less than two weeks by starving inmates en masse, choking the leader, deploying personnel to threaten and attack others, and severing communication from strike leaders.

A Country-wide Problem Beyond Alabama

The strike may have ended, but the message was evident, and outside the state of the region. An activist concludes the film with a call to action: “The things that are occurring in this state are happening in your state and in the public's name.”

From the documented abuses at New York’s a prison facility, to California’s use of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the danger zones of the LA fires for less than standard pay, “you see comparable situations in most states in the country,” noted the filmmaker.

“This isn’t only Alabama,” added Kaufman. “There is a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and rhetoric, and a punitive approach to {everything