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As filmmakers the directors and Charlotte Kaufman visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a deceptively pleasant scene. Similar to other Alabama's correctional institutions, the prison mostly bans journalistic access, but allowed the crew to record its yearly volunteer-run cookout. On camera, imprisoned individuals, predominantly African American, celebrated and laughed to musical performances and religious talks. However off camera, a contrasting narrative emerged—horrific beatings, unreported violent attacks, and unimaginable brutality concealed from public view. Cries for assistance were heard from overheated, filthy housing units. As soon as Jarecki approached the voices, a corrections officer halted filming, stating it was unsafe to interact with the inmates without a police chaperone.

“It was obvious that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki remembered. “They employ the idea that it’s all about security and security, because they aim to prevent you from comprehending what they’re doing. These facilities are like black sites.”

The Revealing Film Uncovering Decades of Abuse

That interrupted barbecue meeting begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary made over half a decade. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour production reveals a gallingly broken institution rife with unregulated abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable cruelty. The film chronicles inmates' herculean efforts, under constant danger, to change conditions deemed “unconstitutional” by the US justice department in the year 2020.

Covert Footage Reveal Horrific Conditions

Following their abruptly ended prison visit, the directors made contact with men inside the state prison system. Led by long-incarcerated activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a group of insiders provided years of footage filmed on illegal mobile devices. The footage is disturbing:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Heaps of human waste
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked surfaces
• Regular guard beatings
• Inmates removed out in body bags
• Corridors of individuals near-catatonic on substances distributed by officers

One activist starts the film in half a decade of isolation as punishment for his activism; subsequently in filming, he is nearly beaten to death by guards and suffers sight in an eye.

The Case of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy

Such violence is, we learn, commonplace within the prison system. While imprisoned sources continued to gather evidence, the directors investigated the killing of Steven Davis, who was assaulted unrecognizably by officers inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The documentary traces the victim's mother, Sandy Ray, as she pursues answers from a uncooperative prison authority. She learns the official version—that Davis menaced officers with a weapon—on the television. But multiple incarcerated witnesses told the family's lawyer that Davis wielded only a plastic knife and yielded at once, only to be beaten by four officers anyway.

A guard, an officer, smashed Davis’s head off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

Following years of obfuscation, the mother met with Alabama’s “tough on crime” attorney general a state official, who informed her that the authorities would decline to file criminal counts. The officer, who had numerous individual legal actions alleging excessive force, was given a higher rank. Authorities covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every guard—part of the $51m used by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to defend staff from wrongdoing claims.

Forced Work: A Modern-Day Slavery System

This state profits financially from ongoing mass incarceration without supervision. The film describes the shocking extent and double standard of the prison system's labor program, a forced-labor arrangement that essentially functions as a present-day mutation of historical bondage. The system provides $450 million in products and services to the government each year for almost minimal wages.

In the program, incarcerated workers, mostly Black Alabamians considered unsuitable for the community, make two dollars a 24-hour period—the identical pay scale set by Alabama for imprisoned labor in the year 1927, at the height of racial segregation. These individuals labor upwards of half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“They trust me to work in the community, but they refuse me to give me release to leave and return to my family.”

These workers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are not, even those considered a higher public safety threat. “This illustrates you an idea of how important this free labor is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to maintain individuals locked up,” said Jarecki.

State-wide Protest and Ongoing Struggle

The documentary culminates in an remarkable feat of activism: a state-wide prisoners’ strike calling for improved treatment in October 2022, led by an activist and his co-organizer. Contraband mobile footage reveals how ADOC broke the protest in 11 days by depriving prisoners collectively, choking the leader, sending soldiers to intimidate and attack others, and severing contact from strike leaders.

The Country-wide Issue Outside Alabama

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

Starting with the documented abuses at New York’s a prison facility, to the state of California's use of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the danger zones of the LA wildfires for below minimum wage, “one observes comparable things in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” said Jarecki.

“This isn’t only one state,” said the co-director. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and language, and a punitive approach to {everything