🔗 Share this article

When documentarians the directors and Charlotte Kaufman entered the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they encountered a deceptively cheerful atmosphere. Like other Alabama prisons, the prison mostly prohibits journalistic access, but allowed the filmmakers to film its annual volunteer-run barbecue. During film, imprisoned individuals, predominantly Black, celebrated and smiled to musical performances and religious talks. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story surfaced—terrifying beatings, unreported violent attacks, and indescribable brutality concealed from public view. Cries for help came from overheated, dirty housing units. As soon as Jarecki approached the sounds, a corrections officer stopped recording, claiming it was dangerous to speak with the inmates without a police escort.

“It became apparent that there were areas of the facility that we were forbidden to see,” Jarecki remembered. “They employ the idea that it’s all about safety and safety, because they aim to prevent you from comprehending what they’re doing. These facilities are like black sites.”

A Revealing Documentary Exposing Years of Abuse

That thwarted cookout meeting opens The Alabama Solution, a stunning new film made over half a decade. Co-directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the feature-length production exposes a gallingly broken institution rife with unregulated abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable cruelty. It chronicles inmates' herculean struggles, under constant physical threat, to change conditions deemed “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Secret Footage Reveal Horrific Realities

After their abruptly ended Easterling visit, the filmmakers made contact with individuals inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran organizers Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a network of sources provided years of evidence recorded on contraband cell phones. These recordings is disturbing:

• Rat-infested cells
• Piles of excrement
• Rotting food and blood-stained surfaces
• Routine guard violence
• Men carried out in remains pouches
• Hallways of men unresponsive on drugs sold by officers

One activist begins the film in five years of solitary confinement as retribution for his activism; subsequently in production, he is almost beaten to death by officers and loses vision in an eye.

The Case of One Inmate: Brutality and Secrecy

This brutality is, the film shows, commonplace within the prison system. While incarcerated witnesses continued to collect evidence, the directors investigated the killing of an inmate, who was beaten beyond recognition by officers inside the William E Donaldson prison in October 2019. The documentary traces the victim's mother, Sandy Ray, as she pursues answers from a uncooperative prison authority. She discovers the official explanation—that her son menaced guards with a weapon—on the news. But several imprisoned observers informed Ray’s lawyer that Davis held only a plastic knife and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by multiple officers anyway.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, stomped Davis’s skull off the concrete floor “like a basketball.”

Following years of evasion, Sandy Ray met with the state's “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who informed her that the authorities would decline to file criminal counts. Gadson, who had more than 20 separate legal actions claiming excessive force, was given a higher rank. The state covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—a portion of the $51m used by the government in the past five years to protect officers from misconduct claims.

Compulsory Work: A Modern-Day Slavery Scheme

The state benefits financially from continued mass incarceration without supervision. The Alabama Solution describes the shocking extent and double standard of the ADOC’s work initiative, a compulsory-work arrangement that essentially functions as a modern-day mutation of historical bondage. This program supplies $450 million in products and work to the state annually for almost minimal wages.

Under the program, incarcerated laborers, overwhelmingly African American Alabamians deemed unsuitable for the community, earn two dollars a 24-hour period—the identical daily wage rate established by Alabama for imprisoned workers in the year 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. They labor more than 12 hours for private companies or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

“Authorities allow me to labor in the public, but they don’t trust me to grant release to get out and go home to my family.”

These laborers are statistically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those deemed a higher security risk. “This illustrates you an understanding of how important this free labor is to the state, and how critical it is for them to maintain individuals locked up,” said the director.

State-wide Strike and Ongoing Struggle

The documentary concludes in an incredible feat of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ work stoppage demanding better treatment in October 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Contraband mobile footage reveals how prison authorities ended the strike in 11 days by starving prisoners collectively, choking the leader, sending personnel to threaten and beat others, and severing contact from strike leaders.

The Country-wide Problem Outside One State

The protest may have ended, but the lesson was evident, and outside the borders of the region. Council concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are occurring in this state are happening in your state and in the public's behalf.”

From the documented violations at New York’s Rikers Island, to California’s use of over a thousand incarcerated emergency responders to the danger zones of the LA wildfires for less than minimum wage, “one observes similar situations in most jurisdictions in the country,” said Jarecki.

“This is not just one state,” said Kaufman. “There is a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and language, and a retributive approach to {everything