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As filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they encountered a deceptively pleasant scene. Like the state's Alabama's prisons, the prison mostly prohibits media access, but allowed the crew to film its annual community-organized barbecue. On film, incarcerated men, mostly African American, celebrated and laughed to live music and sermons. However off camera, a contrasting narrative emerged—horrific beatings, unreported stabbings, and unimaginable brutality concealed from public view. Pleas for assistance were heard from overheated, filthy housing units. When Jarecki approached the sounds, a corrections officer halted filming, stating it was dangerous to speak with the men without a security escort.

“It was very clear that there were areas of the facility that we were not allowed to view,” the filmmaker recalled. “They employ the idea that everything is about security and safety, because they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are similar to secret locations.”

The Stunning Documentary Exposing Decades of Abuse

That thwarted barbecue meeting begins the documentary, a powerful new documentary produced over six years. Collaboratively directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour film reveals a shockingly corrupt system filled with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. It documents inmates' tremendous efforts, under ongoing danger, to improve situations deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Horrific Realities

After their suddenly terminated prison visit, the filmmakers connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by veteran activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a group of insiders supplied years of footage recorded on contraband cell phones. These recordings is disturbing:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Piles of human waste
• Spoiled meals and blood-stained surfaces
• Routine officer violence
• Men removed out in body bags
• Hallways of individuals unresponsive on drugs distributed by staff

Council starts the documentary in half a decade of solitary confinement as punishment for his organizing; subsequently in production, he is almost beaten to death by guards and suffers vision in an eye.

A Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Obfuscation

Such violence is, the film shows, commonplace within the ADOC. While imprisoned sources continued to gather proof, the filmmakers looked into the death of Steven Davis, who was beaten unrecognizably by officers inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The documentary follows Davis’s mother, a family member, as she seeks truth from a uncooperative prison authority. She learns the official explanation—that her son threatened officers with a knife—on the news. However multiple incarcerated witnesses told Ray’s attorney that Davis wielded only a toy knife and surrendered immediately, only to be beaten by multiple guards anyway.

One of them, an officer, smashed Davis’s head off the concrete floor “repeatedly.”

After years of evasion, the mother met with Alabama’s “law-and-order” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who informed her that the authorities would not press criminal counts. The officer, who faced numerous individual legal actions claiming brutality, was given a higher rank. Authorities paid for his legal bills, as well as those of every officer—a portion of the $51 million used by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to protect officers from misconduct claims.

Forced Work: The Modern-Day Exploitation System

This state profits financially from continued imprisonment without supervision. The Alabama Solution details the shocking scope and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s labor program, a forced-labor system that essentially operates as a modern-day mutation of chattel slavery. This program provides $450m in products and services to the state each year for almost minimal wages.

Under the system, incarcerated workers, mostly African American residents deemed unsuitable for society, make two dollars a day—the same pay scale established by Alabama for incarcerated workers in 1927, at the height of racial segregation. These individuals work upwards of half a day for corporate entities 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 go home to my family.”

These workers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those considered a greater public safety threat. “This illustrates you an idea of how important this free labor is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to maintain people imprisoned,” said the director.

Prison-wide Strike and Continued Fight

The documentary concludes in an remarkable achievement of organizing: a state-wide inmates' work stoppage calling for improved conditions in October 2022, organized by an activist and Melvin Ray. Contraband cell phone video reveals how ADOC ended the protest in 11 days by depriving prisoners collectively, choking the leader, sending personnel to threaten and attack others, and cutting off communication from strike leaders.

The National Issue Beyond One State

The protest may have failed, but the message was evident, and beyond the state of the region. Council ends the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are occurring in this state are happening in every region and in the public's name.”

Starting with the documented violations at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to the state of California's deployment of over a thousand imprisoned firefighters to the frontlines of the LA fires for less than minimum wage, “you see similar situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the country,” noted Jarecki.

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