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When documentarians the directors and his co-director entered Easterling prison in 2019, they encountered a deceptively pleasant atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama's prisons, the prison mostly prohibits media entry, but permitted the filmmakers to film its annual volunteer-run cookout. During camera, imprisoned individuals, predominantly Black, celebrated and smiled to musical performances and sermons. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story emerged—terrifying assaults, unreported violent attacks, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for assistance came from sweltering, filthy dorms. As soon as Jarecki approached the sounds, a prison official halted filming, stating it was dangerous to speak with the men without a security escort.

“It was obvious that certain sections of the facility that we were forbidden to view,” the filmmaker recalled. “They employ the idea that it’s all about safety and security, since they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are like secret locations.”

A Revealing Film Uncovering Years of Neglect

That interrupted barbecue event begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new film produced over six years. Co-directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the two-hour film exposes a gallingly broken system rife with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and extreme brutality. The film documents prisoners’ herculean struggles, under constant danger, to improve situations deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Secret Recordings Reveal Ghastly Realities

Following their abruptly terminated Easterling visit, the filmmakers connected with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by veteran activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a group of insiders supplied multiple years of evidence recorded on illegal mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Piles of excrement
• Spoiled food and blood-stained floors
• Regular guard violence
• Inmates carried out in remains pouches
• Corridors of individuals near-catatonic on substances distributed by officers

One activist begins the film in five years of isolation as punishment for his organizing; subsequently in production, he is almost killed by guards and loses sight in one eye.

The Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Obfuscation

This violence is, the film shows, standard within the ADOC. While incarcerated sources continued to collect evidence, the directors investigated the death of an inmate, who was beaten beyond recognition by guards inside the Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The documentary traces the victim's parent, a family member, as she pursues answers from a uncooperative prison authority. She learns the official explanation—that her son threatened guards with a knife—on the news. But several imprisoned witnesses told the family's attorney that the inmate held only a plastic utensil and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by four guards regardless.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, stomped the inmate's head off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

Following three years of evasion, the mother met with Alabama’s “tough on crime” top lawyer a state official, who informed her that the authorities would not press charges. The officer, who had numerous separate lawsuits claiming brutality, was promoted. The state paid for his defense costs, as well as those of every guard—part of the $51 million used by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to protect staff from wrongdoing claims.

Compulsory Work: A Contemporary Slavery Scheme

The state benefits financially from ongoing imprisonment without oversight. The Alabama Solution details the shocking extent and double standard of the prison system's work initiative, a forced-labor system that effectively operates as a modern-day mutation of chattel slavery. This program provides $450 million in goods and services to the state each year for almost minimal wages.

Under the system, incarcerated workers, mostly Black residents considered unsuitable for the community, make $2 a day—the same pay scale set by Alabama for imprisoned workers in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. These individuals labor more than 12 hours for private companies or public sites including the state capitol, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.

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

These workers are statistically less likely to be released than those who are not, even those deemed a higher security risk. “That gives you an understanding of how valuable this free labor is to the state, and how critical it is for them to maintain people imprisoned,” stated the director.

State-wide Protest and Continued Struggle

The Alabama Solution concludes in an incredible feat of organizing: a system-wide inmates' strike demanding better conditions in 2022, organized by an activist and Melvin Ray. Illegal cell phone video reveals how ADOC broke the protest in 11 days by starving inmates en masse, choking Council, deploying personnel to threaten and attack participants, and cutting off communication from organizers.

The National Problem Beyond One State

The protest may have failed, but the message was evident, and outside the borders of the region. Council ends the film with a plea for change: “The abuses that are taking place in this state are happening in your state and in your name.”

From the documented violations at New York’s a prison facility, to the state of California's use of 1,100 incarcerated emergency responders to the frontlines of the Los Angeles fires for below standard pay, “one observes comparable things in most jurisdictions in the union,” said Jarecki.

“This is not only one state,” said Kaufman. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ policy and language, and a punitive strategy to {everything