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When filmmakers the directors and his co-director entered Easterling prison in 2019, they encountered a deceptively pleasant atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama prisons, Easterling largely prohibits media access, but allowed the filmmakers to film its yearly community-organized barbecue. On film, imprisoned individuals, predominantly African American, danced and laughed to musical performances and religious talks. But behind the scenes, a different narrative surfaced—horrific beatings, unreported stabbings, and unimaginable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for help came from sweltering, dirty dorms. When Jarecki approached the voices, a corrections officer halted recording, stating it was dangerous to speak with the inmates without a police escort.

“It became apparent that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki remembered. “They employ the idea that it’s all about safety and safety, since they don’t want you from understanding what they’re doing. These prisons are similar to secret locations.”

The Revealing Documentary Exposing Decades of Abuse

That thwarted barbecue event opens the documentary, a stunning new documentary produced over six years. Co-directed by the director and Kaufman, the feature-length production reveals a gallingly broken system filled with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable brutality. The film documents prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under ongoing physical threat, to improve situations deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Secret Recordings Reveal Horrific Conditions

After their abruptly ended prison visit, the directors connected with individuals inside the state prison system. Led by long-incarcerated organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a network of sources supplied multiple years of evidence recorded on contraband mobile devices. These recordings is disturbing:

• Vermin-ridden living spaces
• Piles of human waste
• Rotting meals and blood-stained floors
• Regular guard beatings
• Men carried out in remains pouches
• Hallways of individuals near-catatonic on substances distributed by staff

Council starts the documentary in half a decade of isolation as punishment for his activism; later in production, he is nearly beaten to death by guards and suffers vision in one eye.

A Case of Steven Davis: Brutality and Obfuscation

This brutality is, the film shows, standard within the prison system. As incarcerated sources continued to collect evidence, the filmmakers investigated the death of an inmate, who was assaulted beyond recognition by officers inside the Donaldson prison in October 2019. The Alabama Solution traces the victim's parent, a family member, as she pursues answers from a uncooperative ADOC. She learns the state’s explanation—that Davis threatened officers with a weapon—on the television. However several imprisoned observers told the family's lawyer that Davis held only a toy knife and yielded immediately, only to be assaulted by four officers regardless.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, stomped the inmate's skull off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

Following three years of evasion, the mother met with Alabama’s “tough on crime” attorney general Steve Marshall, who informed her that the state would not press charges. Gadson, who had more than 20 individual legal actions alleging excessive force, was promoted. Authorities covered for his legal bills, as well as those of all other officer—a portion of the $51m used by the government in the last half-decade to protect staff from misconduct claims.

Compulsory Work: A Modern-Day Exploitation System

This state profits economically from ongoing imprisonment without supervision. The film details the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the prison system's labor program, a compulsory-work system that effectively functions as a present-day version of chattel slavery. This program provides $450m in products and work to the government annually for virtually no pay.

In the program, imprisoned laborers, mostly Black Alabamians deemed 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 Jim Crow. They labor upwards of 12 hours for corporate entities or government locations including the government building, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

“They trust me to work in the community, but they refuse me to give me release to get out and go home to my loved ones.”

Such workers are statistically less likely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those considered a greater public safety risk. “That gives you an idea of how valuable this free workforce is to the state, and how critical it is for them to keep people locked up,” said Jarecki.

State-wide Strike and Ongoing Fight

The Alabama Solution concludes in an remarkable achievement of activism: a system-wide inmates' work stoppage demanding better conditions in October 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Contraband mobile video reveals how prison authorities ended the protest in less than two weeks by starving prisoners en masse, choking the leader, sending personnel to intimidate and attack others, and cutting off contact from strike leaders.

A National Issue Outside Alabama

The strike may have ended, but the lesson was evident, and outside the state of the region. Council ends the documentary with a plea for change: “The abuses that are occurring in Alabama are happening in every state and in your name.”

Starting with the documented violations at New York’s a prison facility, to California’s deployment of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for less than minimum wage, “you see comparable situations in most states in the country,” noted Jarecki.

“This is not just one state,” added Kaufman. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and language, and a retributive strategy to {everything