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When documentarians the directors and Charlotte Kaufman visited the Easterling facility in 2019, they encountered a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama correctional institutions, Easterling largely bans journalistic entry, but permitted the filmmakers to film its annual community-organized barbecue. On camera, imprisoned men, mostly Black, celebrated and laughed to musical performances and religious talks. However off camera, a different story surfaced—terrifying beatings, hidden violent attacks, and unimaginable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for assistance were heard from overheated, filthy dorms. As soon as Jarecki approached the sounds, a prison official halted recording, stating it was dangerous to interact with the inmates without a security escort.

“It was very clear that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to view,” Jarecki recalled. “They use the excuse that it’s all about security and safety, since they don’t want you from understanding what they’re doing. These facilities are similar to secret locations.”

A Stunning Film Uncovering Decades of Abuse

This thwarted barbecue event begins The Alabama Solution, a powerful new documentary produced over six years. Collaboratively directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour production reveals a shockingly broken system rife with unchecked abuse, compulsory work, and extreme brutality. It documents prisoners’ herculean struggles, under constant danger, to improve situations declared “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Covert Footage Reveal Horrific Realities

Following their suddenly ended prison tour, the filmmakers connected with men inside the state prison system. Led by veteran activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a network of sources provided years of evidence recorded on illegal cell phones. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Piles of excrement
• Rotting meals and blood-streaked floors
• Regular guard violence
• Inmates carried out in body bags
• Hallways of individuals unresponsive on drugs distributed by officers

Council begins the film in half a decade of isolation as punishment for his activism; later in production, he is nearly beaten to death by officers and loses vision in an eye.

A Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Secrecy

Such violence is, we learn, commonplace within the ADOC. While incarcerated sources continued to gather proof, the directors investigated the death of Steven Davis, who was beaten beyond recognition by guards inside the William E Donaldson prison in October 2019. The Alabama Solution traces the victim's mother, Sandy Ray, as she seeks truth from a uncooperative prison authority. The mother discovers the state’s explanation—that her son threatened officers with a knife—on the television. But several incarcerated observers told Ray’s lawyer that Davis wielded only a plastic knife and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by multiple guards regardless.

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

Following years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray spoke with the state's “tough on crime” attorney general Steve Marshall, who told her that the state would decline to file charges. The officer, who had more than 20 separate lawsuits alleging brutality, was promoted. The state paid for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—part of the $51m spent by the state of Alabama in the past five years to defend officers from wrongdoing claims.

Compulsory Work: The Modern-Day Slavery Scheme

This state benefits financially from continued imprisonment without supervision. The Alabama Solution details the alarming extent and double standard of the ADOC’s labor program, a forced-labor arrangement that essentially operates as a present-day mutation of chattel slavery. This program supplies $450 million in products and services to the state each year for almost minimal wages.

Under the program, incarcerated laborers, overwhelmingly African American residents deemed unfit for society, make $2 a 24-hour period—the same daily wage rate established by Alabama for imprisoned workers in the year 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. These individuals work more than half a day for private companies or government locations including the government building, the governor’s mansion, the Alabama supreme court, and municipal offices.

“They trust me to work in the community, but they don’t trust me to give me parole to leave and go home to my family.”

These workers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are not, even those deemed a greater public safety threat. “That gives you an understanding of how important this free labor is to the state, and how important it is for them to keep people imprisoned,” said Jarecki.

State-wide Protest and Ongoing Fight

The documentary culminates in an remarkable achievement of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ strike calling for improved conditions in October 2022, organized by an activist and Melvin Ray. Illegal mobile video shows how ADOC broke the strike in less than two weeks by depriving prisoners collectively, choking the leader, deploying personnel to threaten and beat participants, and severing communication from organizers.

The Country-wide Problem Beyond One State

The strike may have ended, but the message was clear, and beyond the state of the region. Council concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are taking place in this state are happening in every state and in your name.”

From the reported abuses at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to the state of California's deployment of over a thousand incarcerated emergency responders to the danger zones of the LA wildfires for below standard pay, “you see similar things in the majority of states in the union,” noted Jarecki.

“This isn’t just one state,” added the co-director. “There is a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and rhetoric, and a punitive strategy to {everything