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As filmmakers the directors and his co-director entered Easterling prison in 2019, they witnessed a deceptively cheerful atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama's correctional institutions, the prison mostly bans media access, but allowed the crew to film its yearly volunteer-run barbecue. During camera, incarcerated men, mostly Black, celebrated and laughed to live music and sermons. But behind the scenes, a different story surfaced—terrifying beatings, unreported stabbings, and indescribable violence swept under the rug. Cries for help came from sweltering, filthy dorms. As soon as Jarecki approached the voices, a prison official halted recording, stating it was unsafe to interact with the inmates without a security escort.

“It was obvious that certain sections of the prison that we were forbidden to view,” Jarecki remembered. “They employ the idea that it’s all about safety and safety, because they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These facilities are similar to black sites.”

The Stunning Documentary Exposing Years of Neglect

That thwarted cookout event opens The Alabama Solution, a powerful new film produced over six years. Collaboratively directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour film exposes a gallingly broken system rife with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. It documents prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under constant physical threat, to change situations declared “illegal” by the US justice department in the year 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Horrific Conditions

Following their suddenly ended Easterling visit, the filmmakers made contact with individuals inside the state prison system. Led by long-incarcerated activists Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council, a network of insiders supplied multiple years of evidence filmed on illegal cell phones. The footage is disturbing:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Heaps of human waste
• Spoiled meals and blood-stained surfaces
• Routine officer violence
• Inmates removed out in body bags
• Hallways of men unresponsive on substances distributed by staff

One activist starts the documentary in five years of isolation as punishment for his activism; later in production, he is almost beaten to death by guards and suffers vision in an eye.

A Story of One Inmate: Violence and Secrecy

Such violence is, the film shows, commonplace within the ADOC. While incarcerated witnesses persisted to collect proof, the directors looked into the killing of an inmate, who was assaulted beyond recognition by guards inside the Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The Alabama Solution traces Davis’s mother, Sandy Ray, as she seeks answers from a uncooperative ADOC. The mother learns the state’s version—that Davis threatened officers with a weapon—on the television. However multiple incarcerated observers told the family's lawyer that the inmate held only a toy utensil and yielded at once, only to be beaten by multiple guards regardless.

A guard, Roderick Gadson, smashed the inmate's head off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

After years of evasion, the mother met with the state's “tough on crime” attorney general a state official, who informed her that the authorities would not press charges. Gadson, who had numerous separate legal actions alleging brutality, was given a higher rank. Authorities covered for his defense costs, as well as those of all other guard—part of the $51 million used by the government in the last half-decade to protect officers from misconduct claims.

Forced Labor: The Contemporary Slavery Scheme

The government profits financially from continued mass incarceration without oversight. The Alabama Solution describes the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s work initiative, a forced-labor system that effectively functions as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. The system supplies $450m in goods and work to the government each year for almost minimal wages.

Under the system, imprisoned workers, mostly Black residents deemed unfit for society, earn $2 a 24-hour period—the same pay scale set by the state for incarcerated labor 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 Alabama supreme court, and municipal offices.

“Authorities allow me to labor in the community, but they don’t trust me to give me parole to get out and return to my family.”

Such laborers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are not, even those deemed a higher security threat. “That gives you an understanding of how important this free workforce is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to keep people locked up,” said the director.

Prison-wide Protest and Ongoing Struggle

The Alabama Solution concludes in an remarkable achievement of organizing: a state-wide inmates' strike calling for improved treatment in October 2022, led by an activist and Melvin Ray. Illegal mobile video shows how ADOC ended the protest in 11 days by starving prisoners en masse, assaulting the leader, sending soldiers to intimidate and attack participants, and cutting off communication from strike leaders.

The National Issue Outside One State

This protest may have ended, but the lesson was evident, and beyond the state of the region. Council ends the documentary with a plea for change: “The things that are taking place in Alabama are happening in your region and in your name.”

From the documented 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 danger zones of the LA fires for less than minimum wage, “you see similar things in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” said Jarecki.

“This isn’t just Alabama,” added the co-director. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ policy and language, and a retributive strategy to {everything