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When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director entered the Easterling facility in 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Like the state's Alabama correctional institutions, Easterling largely prohibits journalistic access, but allowed the crew to record its annual volunteer-run barbecue. During camera, imprisoned individuals, mostly African American, danced and laughed to musical performances and sermons. However behind the scenes, a different story emerged—horrific assaults, hidden stabbings, and unimaginable violence swept under the rug. Cries for assistance were heard from sweltering, dirty dorms. As soon as Jarecki moved toward the sounds, a prison official stopped recording, claiming it was dangerous to interact with the inmates without a police chaperone.

“It was very clear that there were areas of the facility that we were not allowed to view,” Jarecki remembered. “They use the idea that it’s all about safety and security, since they don’t want you from comprehending what they’re doing. These facilities are similar to black sites.”

The Stunning Film Uncovering Years of Abuse

This thwarted cookout event opens the documentary, a powerful new film produced over six years. Co-directed by the director and Kaufman, the feature-length production exposes a gallingly broken institution filled with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. It documents inmates' herculean efforts, under ongoing danger, to improve situations deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Horrific Realities

After their suddenly ended Easterling visit, the directors connected with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by long-incarcerated organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a network of insiders supplied multiple years of footage recorded on contraband cell phones. These recordings is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Heaps of excrement
• Spoiled food and blood-stained floors
• Routine officer beatings
• Inmates carried out in remains pouches
• Corridors of individuals unresponsive on substances sold by staff

One activist starts the film in half a decade of solitary confinement as punishment for his organizing; later in filming, he is nearly killed by guards and loses sight in an eye.

A Story of Steven Davis: Brutality and Obfuscation

This violence is, the film shows, standard within the ADOC. While imprisoned witnesses continued to collect evidence, the filmmakers looked into the death of an inmate, who was beaten unrecognizably by guards inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The Alabama Solution follows the victim's mother, a family member, as she seeks answers from a recalcitrant ADOC. The mother learns the state’s version—that Davis menaced guards with a knife—on the television. However several imprisoned witnesses told the family's lawyer that Davis held only a toy utensil and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by multiple officers regardless.

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

After years of obfuscation, the mother spoke with the state's “tough on crime” attorney general a state official, who told her that the state would not press charges. The officer, who had numerous separate lawsuits claiming excessive force, was promoted. The state covered for his legal bills, as well as those of all other guard—a portion of the $51 million spent by the government in the last half-decade to protect officers from wrongdoing lawsuits.

Compulsory Labor: The Modern-Day Exploitation System

The government profits economically from ongoing mass incarceration without supervision. The film describes the shocking scope and double standard of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work arrangement that effectively operates as a present-day version of chattel slavery. The system supplies $450 million in products and work to the state annually for virtually minimal wages.

In the system, imprisoned laborers, overwhelmingly African American residents deemed unfit for the community, make two dollars a day—the identical daily wage rate set by the state for incarcerated workers in 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. They work more than 12 hours for corporate entities or government locations including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

“They trust me to labor in the community, but they refuse me to give me release to leave and return to my family.”

These laborers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are not, even those considered 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 maintain people imprisoned,” said the director.

Prison-wide Strike and Ongoing Struggle

The documentary culminates in an remarkable achievement of activism: a state-wide prisoners’ strike demanding improved conditions in 2022, led by Council and his co-organizer. Illegal mobile video shows how prison authorities broke the strike in 11 days by starving prisoners en masse, assaulting Council, sending personnel to intimidate and beat others, and severing contact from organizers.

The Country-wide Problem Outside One State

The strike may have failed, but the lesson was clear, and beyond the borders of Alabama. Council ends the film with a plea for change: “The abuses that are occurring in Alabama are happening in every region and in your name.”

Starting with the reported violations at New York’s Rikers Island, to California’s deployment of 1,100 incarcerated firefighters to the frontlines of the LA fires for below standard pay, “one observes similar situations in the majority of states in the country,” said the filmmaker.

“This isn’t only one state,” said Kaufman. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and language, and a punitive approach to {everything