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When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited the Easterling facility in 2019, they encountered a misleadingly pleasant scene. Like the state's Alabama prisons, the prison mostly bans journalistic access, but permitted the crew to film its yearly volunteer-run cookout. On camera, incarcerated individuals, mostly Black, danced and laughed to live music and religious talks. However behind the scenes, a contrasting narrative surfaced—horrific beatings, unreported stabbings, and unimaginable brutality swept under the rug. Pleas for help came from sweltering, filthy housing units. When the director moved toward the sounds, a corrections officer halted filming, claiming it was unsafe to interact with the men without a security escort.

“It became apparent that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” the filmmaker recalled. “They employ the excuse that it’s all about security and security, since they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are like black sites.”

A Revealing Documentary Uncovering Decades of Abuse

That thwarted cookout meeting begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary produced over half a decade. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour film reveals a shockingly corrupt system rife with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. It chronicles prisoners’ herculean struggles, under constant physical threat, to improve situations deemed “unconstitutional” by the US justice department in the year 2020.

Covert Recordings Reveal Horrific Realities

After their abruptly terminated prison tour, the directors connected with individuals inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a network of sources supplied multiple years of footage recorded on illegal mobile devices. These recordings is disturbing:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Heaps of excrement
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked surfaces
• Regular guard violence
• Inmates removed 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 retribution for his organizing; later in production, he is almost beaten to death by officers and loses sight in one eye.

The Case of Steven Davis: Brutality and Obfuscation

Such violence is, the film shows, commonplace within the prison system. As imprisoned witnesses persisted to collect proof, the directors looked into the killing of Steven Davis, who was beaten unrecognizably by guards inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The documentary traces the victim's mother, a family member, as she pursues truth from a uncooperative prison authority. The mother discovers the state’s version—that her son threatened guards with a knife—on the news. However multiple imprisoned witnesses told Ray’s attorney that Davis wielded only a toy utensil and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by multiple officers anyway.

One of them, an officer, smashed Davis’s skull off the concrete floor “like a basketball.”

Following three years of obfuscation, the mother met with Alabama’s “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who informed her that the state would decline to file charges. The officer, who faced numerous individual legal actions claiming brutality, was promoted. The state covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every guard—part of the $51 million used by the government in the last half-decade to defend staff from misconduct claims.

Forced Labor: The Modern-Day Exploitation System

The government profits economically from ongoing imprisonment without oversight. The Alabama Solution describes the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s work initiative, a forced-labor arrangement that effectively functions as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. This program provides $450 million in goods and work to the state annually for almost no pay.

Under the program, imprisoned workers, overwhelmingly Black Alabamians considered unfit for the community, make $2 a 24-hour period—the identical daily wage rate established by Alabama for imprisoned labor in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. These individuals work more than 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 public, but they refuse me to grant parole to get out and return to my family.”

Such laborers are numerically less likely to be released than those who are not, even those deemed a greater security threat. “That gives you an understanding of how valuable this free labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep individuals locked up,” stated Jarecki.

State-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The documentary concludes in an remarkable feat of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ work stoppage demanding improved treatment in 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Contraband cell phone footage shows how ADOC ended the strike in less than two weeks by starving inmates collectively, choking the leader, sending soldiers to threaten and beat participants, and severing contact from organizers.

A National Problem Outside Alabama

This protest may have failed, but the message was clear, and beyond the state of Alabama. Council concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are taking place in Alabama are taking place in every region and in the public's behalf.”

From the reported violations at New York’s Rikers Island, to California’s use of over a thousand imprisoned firefighters to the frontlines of the LA fires for less than minimum wage, “you see comparable situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” noted Jarecki.

“This isn’t just Alabama,” added the co-director. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything