When filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a deceptively cheerful scene. Similar to other Alabama prisons, the prison largely bans media entry, but permitted the crew to film its annual volunteer-run cookout. During camera, incarcerated men, predominantly African American, danced and smiled to live music and sermons. But behind the scenes, a different narrative surfaced—horrific assaults, hidden violent attacks, and unimaginable brutality swept under the rug. Pleas for assistance were heard from overheated, dirty housing units. As soon as Jarecki approached the voices, a corrections officer stopped recording, claiming it was unsafe to interact with the men without a security escort.
“It was very clear that certain sections of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki recalled. “They use the excuse that everything is about security and security, since they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These facilities are similar to black sites.”
A Stunning Film Uncovering Years of Neglect
That thwarted cookout meeting begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new film made over six years. Co-directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the two-hour film reveals a shockingly broken institution filled with unchecked abuse, forced labor, and extreme brutality. It chronicles inmates' herculean struggles, under constant physical threat, to improve situations deemed “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.
Secret Footage Uncover Horrific Conditions
Following their suddenly terminated Easterling tour, the filmmakers connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by veteran organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a group of sources provided years of footage recorded on contraband cell phones. The footage is ghastly:
- Vermin-ridden cells
- Piles of excrement
- Rotting meals and blood-streaked surfaces
- Routine guard violence
- Inmates carried out in body bags
- Corridors of men near-catatonic on substances distributed by officers
Council begins the documentary in five years of isolation as punishment for his organizing; subsequently in production, he is almost killed by guards and suffers sight in one eye.
The Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy
Such violence is, we learn, standard within the ADOC. While imprisoned sources persisted to gather proof, the directors investigated the killing of an inmate, who was assaulted beyond recognition by officers inside the William E Donaldson prison in October 2019. The Alabama Solution traces Davis’s mother, Sandy Ray, as she seeks truth from a recalcitrant prison authority. The mother discovers the state’s explanation—that Davis threatened guards with a knife—on the news. However multiple imprisoned observers told the family's attorney that Davis held only a toy utensil and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by multiple officers regardless.
A guard, an officer, smashed Davis’s head off the hard surface “repeatedly.”
After three years of evasion, the mother met with the state's “law-and-order” attorney general a state official, who informed her that the state would not press charges. Gadson, who had numerous individual legal actions alleging brutality, was given a higher rank. The state paid for his legal bills, as well as those of all other officer—part of the $51m used by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to defend staff from misconduct claims.
Forced Labor: The Modern-Day Exploitation Scheme
The state profits financially from continued mass incarceration without oversight. The film describes the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s labor program, a forced-labor system that effectively operates as a modern-day version of historical bondage. This program provides $450m in goods and work to the state annually for virtually minimal wages.
Under the program, incarcerated workers, overwhelmingly Black residents considered unfit for society, make two dollars a 24-hour period—the same daily wage rate set by Alabama for incarcerated workers in the year 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. These individuals labor upwards of half a day for private companies or public sites including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.
“They trust me to work in the public, but they don’t trust me to give me release to leave and return to my family.”
Such laborers are numerically more unlikely to be released than those who are not, even those deemed a greater public safety threat. “This illustrates you an idea of how valuable this free workforce is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep people imprisoned,” stated the director.
Prison-wide Strike and Ongoing Fight
The Alabama Solution concludes in an remarkable feat of activism: a state-wide prisoners’ strike calling for better treatment in October 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Contraband cell phone video reveals how prison authorities broke the protest in less than two weeks by starving prisoners collectively, choking Council, deploying personnel to threaten and beat others, and cutting off contact from organizers.
The Country-wide Issue Beyond One State
This protest may have ended, but the message was clear, and outside the state of the region. Council concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The abuses that are occurring in Alabama are happening in every state and in your behalf.”
Starting with the reported violations at New York’s a prison facility, to California’s use of over a thousand imprisoned emergency responders to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for less than standard pay, “you see similar things in most states in the union,” said Jarecki.
“This isn’t only one state,” said the co-director. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ policy and language, and a punitive strategy to {everything
