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As filmmakers the directors and Charlotte Kaufman entered Easterling prison in 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama's correctional institutions, Easterling largely prohibits media access, but allowed the crew to film its yearly volunteer-run barbecue. During film, incarcerated individuals, predominantly Black, celebrated and smiled to live music and sermons. But behind the scenes, a contrasting narrative emerged—horrific assaults, hidden violent attacks, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Pleas for help came from sweltering, filthy housing units. When the director moved toward the voices, a corrections officer halted recording, stating it was unsafe to speak with the men without a security escort.

“It was very clear that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” the filmmaker recalled. “They employ the excuse that everything is about safety and security, since they aim to prevent you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are similar to secret locations.”

A Stunning Film Exposing Years of Neglect

This thwarted cookout event opens The Alabama Solution, a powerful new film produced over half a decade. Co-directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the two-hour production reveals a gallingly corrupt institution rife with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. The film documents prisoners’ tremendous struggles, under ongoing danger, to change conditions declared “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Covert Recordings Uncover Horrific Conditions

Following their abruptly terminated prison tour, the filmmakers made contact with individuals inside the state prison system. Led by veteran activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a network of insiders provided years of evidence filmed on illegal cell phones. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Heaps of excrement
• Spoiled food and blood-streaked surfaces
• Regular guard beatings
• Inmates carried out in body bags
• Hallways of men near-catatonic on drugs distributed by staff

Council starts the film in five years of isolation as retribution for his activism; later in filming, he is almost killed by officers and loses vision in one eye.

The Case of Steven Davis: Brutality and Secrecy

Such violence is, the film shows, commonplace within the prison system. While incarcerated sources continued to gather evidence, the directors investigated the killing of Steven Davis, who was beaten beyond recognition by officers inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The Alabama Solution follows Davis’s mother, Sandy Ray, as she seeks truth from a uncooperative ADOC. She learns the official version—that Davis menaced guards with a weapon—on the television. However several incarcerated witnesses told the family's lawyer that the inmate wielded only a plastic utensil and yielded at once, only to be beaten by four officers regardless.

A guard, Roderick Gadson, smashed Davis’s skull off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

Following three years of evasion, the mother spoke with Alabama’s “tough on crime” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who told her that the state would not press criminal counts. The officer, who had more than 20 individual legal actions claiming brutality, was promoted. Authorities covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—a portion of the $51 million spent by the state of Alabama in the past five years to protect officers from wrongdoing claims.

Compulsory Labor: A Contemporary Exploitation Scheme

This state benefits financially from continued imprisonment without oversight. The Alabama Solution describes the alarming scope and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work system that effectively functions as a present-day version of chattel slavery. The system supplies $450m in products and work to the state each year for virtually no pay.

In the system, imprisoned laborers, mostly Black residents considered unsuitable for the community, earn two dollars a day—the identical pay scale set by Alabama for incarcerated workers in the year 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. These individuals labor more than 12 hours for corporate entities or government locations including the government building, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.

“They trust me to labor in the public, but they refuse me to grant release to leave and return to my family.”

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

State-wide Protest and Continued Struggle

The documentary culminates in an remarkable achievement of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ strike calling for improved conditions in October 2022, organized by an activist and his co-organizer. Contraband mobile video reveals how prison authorities ended the protest in 11 days by depriving inmates collectively, choking Council, deploying soldiers to intimidate and beat participants, and cutting off contact from organizers.

A National Issue Beyond One State

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

Starting with the documented violations at the state of New York's a prison facility, to the state of California's use of over a thousand imprisoned emergency responders to the danger zones of the Los Angeles fires for less than standard pay, “one observes comparable things in most jurisdictions in the country,” said Jarecki.

“This isn’t only one state,” said Kaufman. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and rhetoric, and a retributive strategy to {everything