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As documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director entered Easterling prison in 2019, they encountered a deceptively pleasant atmosphere. Like the state's Alabama's correctional institutions, Easterling largely bans media entry, but permitted the filmmakers to record its annual volunteer-run barbecue. On camera, imprisoned men, mostly African American, danced and laughed to live music and sermons. But off camera, a different narrative emerged—horrific assaults, hidden violent attacks, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for help were heard from overheated, filthy dorms. As soon as the director approached the voices, a corrections officer stopped recording, claiming it was unsafe to speak with the men without a police escort.

“It became apparent that certain sections of the facility that we were forbidden to see,” the filmmaker remembered. “They employ the excuse that it’s all about security and security, since they don’t want you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are similar to black sites.”

A Revealing Documentary Uncovering Decades of Neglect

This interrupted cookout event begins the documentary, a stunning new documentary produced over six years. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and his partner, the feature-length production exposes a gallingly broken institution filled with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and extreme brutality. It chronicles inmates' herculean efforts, under constant danger, to change situations declared “illegal” by the US justice department in 2020.

Covert Recordings Uncover Horrific Realities

Following their abruptly ended prison visit, the filmmakers connected with individuals inside the state prison system. Guided by long-incarcerated organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a group of sources provided multiple years of footage filmed on contraband cell phones. These recordings is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Heaps of human waste
• Rotting food and blood-streaked floors
• Routine officer beatings
• Men carried out in remains pouches
• Hallways of men unresponsive on drugs distributed by officers

Council begins the film in five years of isolation as punishment for his activism; later in production, he is almost beaten to death by officers and suffers sight in an eye.

A Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Secrecy

Such violence is, the film shows, commonplace within the ADOC. As imprisoned witnesses continued to gather evidence, the filmmakers investigated the death of Steven Davis, who was beaten beyond recognition by officers inside the Donaldson prison in 2019. The documentary follows Davis’s parent, a family member, as she pursues answers from a uncooperative ADOC. The mother discovers the state’s explanation—that her son threatened guards with a weapon—on the television. But multiple incarcerated observers told Ray’s lawyer that the inmate wielded only a plastic knife and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by multiple officers anyway.

A guard, Roderick Gadson, stomped the inmate's skull off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

Following three years of evasion, Sandy Ray spoke with Alabama’s “tough on crime” attorney general Steve Marshall, who informed her that the state would decline to file charges. Gadson, who faced numerous individual lawsuits alleging brutality, was promoted. Authorities paid for his legal bills, as well as those of every guard—part of the $51m spent by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to defend staff from misconduct claims.

Forced Labor: A Contemporary Slavery System

This government benefits financially from continued imprisonment without oversight. The Alabama Solution details the alarming scope and double standard of the prison system's work initiative, a forced-labor system that effectively operates as a modern-day mutation of chattel slavery. This program supplies $450 million in products and services to the state annually for almost minimal wages.

Under the program, incarcerated workers, overwhelmingly African American Alabamians considered unfit for the community, make two dollars a 24-hour period—the same pay scale established by Alabama for imprisoned labor in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. These individuals labor more than half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.

“Authorities allow me to work in the public, but they don’t trust me to grant release to get out and return to my loved ones.”

These workers are statistically less likely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those considered a higher public safety threat. “That gives you an idea of how important this free workforce is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep individuals locked up,” said the director.

State-wide Protest and Continued Fight

The Alabama Solution concludes in an remarkable feat of organizing: a system-wide prisoners’ strike demanding better conditions in October 2022, organized by an activist and Melvin Ray. Contraband cell phone video reveals how ADOC ended the protest in less than two weeks by depriving prisoners en masse, choking Council, deploying soldiers to intimidate and beat others, and cutting off contact from strike leaders.

A Country-wide Problem Beyond Alabama

This protest may have failed, but the message was clear, and beyond the state of Alabama. Council concludes the film with a plea for change: “The abuses that are occurring in this state are happening in every region and in the public's behalf.”

From the reported abuses at the state of New York's a prison facility, to California’s use of over a thousand imprisoned emergency responders to the danger zones of the Los Angeles fires for less than standard pay, “you see similar things in most states in the union,” noted the filmmaker.

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