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As documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited the Easterling facility in 2019, they encountered a misleadingly pleasant atmosphere. Like the state's Alabama correctional institutions, the prison mostly bans journalistic entry, but permitted the filmmakers to film its annual community-organized barbecue. On film, incarcerated men, predominantly African American, celebrated and laughed to musical performances and sermons. However behind the scenes, a contrasting story emerged—horrific assaults, hidden stabbings, and indescribable violence swept under the rug. Cries for help were heard from overheated, filthy dorms. When the director approached the sounds, a corrections officer stopped recording, claiming it was dangerous to interact with the inmates without a police escort.

“It was very clear that there were areas of the facility that we were not allowed to view,” Jarecki recalled. “They employ the idea that it’s all about safety and security, because they don’t want you from comprehending what they’re doing. These facilities are like black sites.”

A Revealing Film Exposing Years of Abuse

That interrupted cookout meeting opens The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary made over six years. Co-directed by Jarecki and his partner, the two-hour film reveals a shockingly broken system rife with unchecked abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable cruelty. It documents inmates' herculean struggles, under ongoing physical threat, to improve situations declared “illegal” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Secret Footage Reveal Ghastly Realities

Following their suddenly terminated Easterling visit, the directors connected with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by veteran activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a network of sources provided years of evidence recorded on illegal mobile devices. The footage is disturbing:

• Vermin-ridden living spaces
• Heaps of excrement
• Rotting meals and blood-streaked surfaces
• Regular officer violence
• Inmates carried out in body bags
• Corridors of individuals near-catatonic on drugs distributed by staff

Council begins the film in half a decade of isolation as punishment for his activism; later in filming, he is nearly beaten to death by officers and loses vision in one eye.

A Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Obfuscation

This violence is, we learn, commonplace within the prison system. As imprisoned sources continued to gather proof, the filmmakers investigated the killing of an inmate, who was assaulted unrecognizably by guards inside the Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The documentary traces the victim's mother, Sandy Ray, as she pursues truth from a uncooperative prison authority. She discovers the state’s explanation—that Davis menaced officers with a weapon—on the television. However multiple imprisoned observers told the family's attorney that Davis held only a plastic knife and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by multiple officers anyway.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, stomped the inmate's skull off the concrete floor “repeatedly.”

After three years of evasion, the mother met with the state's “tough on crime” attorney general Steve Marshall, who informed her that the state would not press charges. Gadson, who had more than 20 individual legal actions alleging excessive force, was promoted. Authorities covered for his legal bills, as well as those of every officer—part of the $51 million used by the government in the past five years to protect staff from wrongdoing claims.

Forced Work: The Modern-Day Exploitation Scheme

This government profits economically from ongoing imprisonment without supervision. The Alabama Solution details the alarming scope and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a forced-labor arrangement that essentially operates as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. This program supplies $450 million in products and work to the state annually for almost no pay.

In the system, imprisoned laborers, overwhelmingly Black Alabamians deemed unfit for society, make $2 a 24-hour period—the identical daily wage rate established by the state for imprisoned workers in the year 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. They labor more than 12 hours for private companies or government locations including the government building, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“Authorities allow me to labor in the public, but they don’t trust me to give me parole to leave and go home to my loved ones.”

These laborers are statistically less likely to be released than those who are not, even those deemed a higher public safety threat. “That gives you an understanding of how valuable this free labor is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to maintain individuals locked up,” said the director.

State-wide Protest and Continued Fight

The documentary culminates in an incredible feat of organizing: a system-wide inmates' strike demanding improved treatment in October 2022, led by an activist and Melvin Ray. Illegal cell phone footage reveals how prison authorities ended the strike in 11 days by depriving inmates en masse, choking the leader, deploying personnel to intimidate and beat participants, and severing contact from strike leaders.

A National Problem Beyond One State

The strike may have ended, but the message was clear, and outside the borders of the region. An activist ends the documentary with a call to action: “The abuses that are occurring in this state are taking place in your state and in your name.”

From the documented abuses at the state of New York's a prison facility, to the state of California's use of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for below minimum wage, “you see comparable situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” said the filmmaker.

“This isn’t only one state,” added Kaufman. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything