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When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited Easterling prison in 2019, they witnessed a deceptively cheerful scene. Similar to the state's Alabama's prisons, Easterling mostly bans journalistic entry, but allowed the crew to record its yearly community-organized barbecue. During camera, imprisoned individuals, mostly Black, celebrated and smiled to live music and sermons. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story surfaced—terrifying beatings, hidden stabbings, and unimaginable violence swept under the rug. Cries for assistance came from overheated, filthy dorms. When the director moved toward the voices, a prison official halted recording, claiming it was unsafe to speak with the men 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 employ the idea that it’s all about safety and safety, since they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are similar to black sites.”

A Revealing Film Uncovering Years of Abuse

This thwarted cookout meeting opens the documentary, a stunning new film produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour production reveals a shockingly broken institution filled with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. The film chronicles inmates' tremendous struggles, under ongoing danger, to improve conditions deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Secret Recordings Uncover Ghastly Realities

Following their suddenly terminated Easterling visit, the directors connected with men inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran organizers Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a group of insiders supplied years of footage filmed on contraband cell phones. The footage is disturbing:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Piles of human waste
• Rotting meals and blood-streaked floors
• Routine guard beatings
• Inmates carried out in remains pouches
• Hallways of men near-catatonic on substances sold by staff

One activist starts the documentary in five years of solitary confinement as retribution for his activism; subsequently in filming, he is almost killed by guards and loses vision in an eye.

The Story of Steven Davis: Brutality and Secrecy

Such violence is, we learn, commonplace within the prison system. As incarcerated sources continued to gather evidence, the filmmakers investigated the death of Steven Davis, who was beaten unrecognizably by officers inside the Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The Alabama Solution follows the victim's parent, a family member, as she pursues answers from a uncooperative ADOC. She learns the official version—that Davis menaced guards with a weapon—on the news. However multiple imprisoned observers informed Ray’s attorney that the inmate wielded only a toy utensil and yielded immediately, only to be assaulted by multiple officers anyway.

One of them, an officer, stomped the inmate's skull off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

Following three years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray met with the state's “tough on crime” top lawyer a state official, who told her that the authorities would not press charges. The officer, who faced numerous individual legal actions alleging brutality, was promoted. The state covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—part of the $51 million used by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to protect officers from misconduct lawsuits.

Forced Labor: The Contemporary Slavery Scheme

This government benefits financially from ongoing mass incarceration without oversight. The film details the alarming scope and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work system that essentially functions as a present-day mutation of historical bondage. The system provides $450 million in goods and work to the state each year for almost no pay.

Under the program, imprisoned laborers, overwhelmingly Black Alabamians deemed unsuitable for society, make two dollars a 24-hour period—the same pay scale set by Alabama for incarcerated labor in 1927, at the height of racial segregation. These individuals work upwards of 12 hours for corporate entities or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

“Authorities allow me to work in the community, but they don’t trust me to give me release to leave and return to my loved ones.”

Such laborers are statistically less likely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those considered a higher public safety risk. “This illustrates you an idea of how important this free labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to maintain people imprisoned,” said the director.

Prison-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The Alabama Solution culminates in an remarkable feat of activism: a state-wide inmates' strike demanding improved treatment in October 2022, led by an activist and his co-organizer. Illegal mobile video reveals how prison authorities broke the protest in 11 days by starving inmates en masse, assaulting the leader, sending soldiers to intimidate and attack participants, and cutting off communication from organizers.

The National Problem Beyond One State

The strike may have failed, but the message was evident, and beyond the state of Alabama. Council ends the film with a call to action: “The abuses that are occurring in Alabama are taking place in every state and in your name.”

Starting with the documented violations at New York’s a prison facility, to California’s use of over a thousand imprisoned emergency responders to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for less than minimum wage, “one observes comparable situations in the majority of states in the country,” said the filmmaker.

“This isn’t just Alabama,” added the co-director. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and rhetoric, and a retributive strategy to {everything