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When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman entered Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a deceptively pleasant atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama prisons, the prison largely bans journalistic access, but permitted the filmmakers to film its annual community-organized barbecue. On camera, imprisoned individuals, mostly Black, celebrated and laughed to live music and religious talks. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story surfaced—terrifying beatings, hidden violent attacks, and unimaginable brutality concealed from public view. Pleas for help came from overheated, dirty housing units. When Jarecki moved toward the voices, a corrections officer halted recording, stating it was dangerous to speak with the men without a police escort.

“It became apparent that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki recalled. “They employ the excuse that it’s all about safety and security, because they aim to prevent you from understanding what is occurring. These prisons are like black sites.”

The Stunning Documentary Exposing Years of Abuse

That thwarted cookout event opens the documentary, a stunning new documentary made over six years. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour production reveals a gallingly broken system filled with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and extreme cruelty. The film chronicles prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under ongoing physical threat, to improve situations deemed “unconstitutional” by the US justice department in the year 2020.

Secret Recordings Uncover Horrific Realities

Following their abruptly terminated prison visit, the filmmakers connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by veteran activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a group of sources supplied years of footage recorded on contraband cell phones. These recordings is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Piles of excrement
• Spoiled food and blood-streaked floors
• Regular guard violence
• Inmates removed out in remains pouches
• Hallways of men unresponsive on substances distributed by officers

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

The Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Secrecy

This brutality is, the film shows, commonplace within the prison system. As imprisoned witnesses persisted to gather proof, the filmmakers looked into the death of Steven Davis, who was beaten unrecognizably by guards inside the Donaldson prison in 2019. The documentary traces Davis’s parent, Sandy Ray, as she seeks truth from a recalcitrant prison authority. The mother learns the state’s explanation—that Davis threatened guards with a knife—on the television. But multiple imprisoned observers informed the family's lawyer that the inmate held only a plastic knife and yielded immediately, only to be assaulted by four guards regardless.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, smashed Davis’s head off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

Following years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray spoke with the state's “tough on crime” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who informed her that the state would not press criminal counts. The officer, who had more than 20 individual legal actions claiming excessive force, 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 past five years to protect staff from wrongdoing lawsuits.

Forced Work: The Contemporary Slavery Scheme

This government profits financially from ongoing mass incarceration without supervision. The Alabama Solution describes the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work system that essentially functions as a modern-day version of historical bondage. This program provides $450m in products and services to the state annually for almost minimal wages.

Under the system, incarcerated laborers, mostly Black residents considered unfit for the community, earn $2 a 24-hour period—the identical daily wage rate established by the state for imprisoned labor in the year 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. These individuals labor more than half a day for private companies 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 refuse me to grant release to get out and return to my loved ones.”

These laborers are numerically more unlikely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those deemed a greater public safety threat. “This illustrates you an understanding of how important this low-cost workforce is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to maintain people imprisoned,” stated the director.

Prison-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The Alabama Solution concludes in an incredible feat of organizing: a state-wide inmates' strike demanding improved treatment in October 2022, led by Council and Melvin Ray. Illegal mobile video reveals how prison authorities broke the strike in less than two weeks by depriving inmates collectively, assaulting the leader, deploying personnel to intimidate and beat participants, and severing communication from strike leaders.

The Country-wide Issue Outside One State

This strike may have ended, but the message was clear, and outside the borders of Alabama. Council ends the film with a plea for change: “The things that are taking place in Alabama are taking place in every region and in your name.”

Starting with the reported abuses at the state of New York's a prison facility, to California’s deployment of over a thousand incarcerated firefighters to the danger zones of the Los Angeles wildfires for below minimum wage, “you see similar situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the country,” said Jarecki.

“This isn’t only Alabama,” said the co-director. “There is a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and language, and a punitive strategy to {everything