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As documentarians the directors and his co-director entered Easterling prison in 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly pleasant atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama's correctional institutions, the prison largely prohibits media access, but allowed the crew to film its yearly community-organized cookout. On film, imprisoned individuals, mostly African American, danced and laughed to musical performances and sermons. But off camera, a contrasting narrative emerged—horrific assaults, unreported violent attacks, and unimaginable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for assistance came from overheated, filthy dorms. As soon as the director approached the sounds, a corrections officer stopped recording, claiming it was dangerous to interact with the men without a security chaperone.

“It was obvious that there were areas of the facility that we were forbidden to view,” Jarecki remembered. “They employ the excuse that it’s all about safety and security, because they don’t want you from comprehending what is occurring. These facilities are similar to secret locations.”

A Stunning Film Uncovering Decades of Neglect

This interrupted cookout meeting opens The Alabama Solution, a powerful new documentary produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by the director and Kaufman, the two-hour film reveals a shockingly broken institution rife with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and extreme brutality. It documents inmates' tremendous efforts, under ongoing physical threat, to change conditions declared “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Ghastly Conditions

After their abruptly terminated prison visit, the filmmakers connected with individuals inside the state prison system. Guided by long-incarcerated organizers Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a group of insiders provided multiple years of footage recorded on illegal mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested cells
• Heaps of excrement
• Rotting food and blood-streaked surfaces
• Routine guard beatings
• Inmates removed out in body bags
• Corridors of men near-catatonic on substances sold by officers

Council starts the film in half a decade of isolation as retribution for his activism; subsequently in production, he is almost beaten to death by officers and loses vision in an eye.

A Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Obfuscation

Such violence is, we learn, standard within the prison system. As imprisoned witnesses continued to collect evidence, the filmmakers investigated the killing of an inmate, who was beaten unrecognizably by guards inside the Donaldson prison in 2019. The Alabama Solution follows Davis’s parent, Sandy Ray, as she pursues answers from a uncooperative prison authority. The mother discovers the official version—that Davis threatened officers with a weapon—on the television. However multiple incarcerated witnesses informed the family's attorney that the inmate wielded only a toy knife and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by multiple officers anyway.

A guard, an officer, smashed the inmate's head off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

After three years of evasion, Sandy Ray met with Alabama’s “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who informed her that the authorities would decline to file charges. The officer, who faced numerous individual lawsuits alleging brutality, was promoted. The state paid for his legal bills, as well as those of all other officer—part of the $51 million used by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to protect staff from wrongdoing lawsuits.

Forced Work: A Contemporary Exploitation System

This government benefits economically from continued mass incarceration without oversight. The Alabama Solution details the alarming extent and double standard of the ADOC’s labor program, a forced-labor arrangement that essentially functions as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. The system provides $450 million in products and work to the state annually for almost no pay.

Under the system, imprisoned laborers, mostly African American residents deemed unfit for society, earn $2 a day—the identical daily wage rate set by Alabama for imprisoned labor in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. These individuals labor more than half a day for private companies or public sites including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“Authorities allow me to work in the public, but they refuse me to grant parole to get out and go home to my family.”

These workers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are not, even those considered a greater public safety threat. “That gives you an idea of how valuable this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to keep individuals locked up,” stated Jarecki.

Prison-wide Protest and Ongoing Struggle

The Alabama Solution concludes in an incredible feat of activism: a state-wide inmates' work stoppage demanding improved treatment in October 2022, led by an activist and his co-organizer. Illegal mobile video reveals how ADOC ended the strike in 11 days by starving prisoners collectively, assaulting the leader, sending personnel to threaten and beat participants, and severing communication from organizers.

The Country-wide Issue Outside Alabama

This protest may have ended, but the lesson was clear, and beyond the borders of Alabama. Council concludes the film with a plea for change: “The abuses that are taking place in this state are happening in every region and in the public's name.”

From the reported violations at New York’s Rikers Island, to California’s deployment of over a thousand incarcerated emergency responders to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for less than standard pay, “you see similar things in most states in the union,” noted Jarecki.

“This isn’t only one state,” said Kaufman. “There is a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and language, and a punitive approach to {everything