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When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Like the state's Alabama's prisons, Easterling largely bans journalistic access, but permitted the crew to record its annual community-organized cookout. During camera, imprisoned individuals, mostly African American, danced and smiled to live music and sermons. However behind the scenes, a contrasting narrative emerged—terrifying assaults, unreported stabbings, and unimaginable brutality swept under the rug. Pleas for assistance came from overheated, dirty housing units. When Jarecki moved toward the voices, a corrections officer stopped filming, claiming it was dangerous to interact with the inmates without a security escort.

“It was very clear that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to view,” Jarecki remembered. “They use the idea that it’s all about safety and security, since they don’t want you from understanding what is occurring. These prisons are like secret locations.”

A Stunning Film Exposing Years of Abuse

That interrupted barbecue meeting begins the documentary, a powerful new film produced over half a decade. Co-directed by the director and Kaufman, the feature-length production exposes a shockingly broken system filled with unchecked abuse, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. The film documents prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under constant physical threat, to change situations deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Horrific Realities

After their abruptly terminated Easterling visit, the directors connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by long-incarcerated organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a network of insiders supplied multiple years of footage recorded on illegal cell phones. These recordings is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Piles of human waste
• Rotting meals and blood-streaked surfaces
• Routine guard violence
• Men removed out in body bags
• Hallways of men near-catatonic on substances sold by staff

Council starts the documentary in five years of isolation as retribution for his organizing; later in filming, he is almost beaten to death by guards and suffers vision in an eye.

The Case of Steven Davis: Brutality and Obfuscation

Such brutality is, we learn, commonplace within the ADOC. As incarcerated sources continued to collect evidence, the filmmakers looked into the death of an inmate, who was assaulted beyond recognition by officers inside the William E Donaldson prison in October 2019. The documentary follows Davis’s mother, Sandy Ray, as she pursues answers from a uncooperative prison authority. She discovers the state’s explanation—that her son menaced guards with a knife—on the television. However several incarcerated witnesses informed the family's attorney that the inmate held only a toy knife and yielded immediately, only to be assaulted by four guards anyway.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, smashed Davis’s head off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

Following three years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray spoke with the state's “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who informed her that the state would not press criminal counts. The officer, who had more than 20 individual lawsuits claiming brutality, was promoted. 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 protect officers from wrongdoing claims.

Compulsory Labor: A Contemporary Exploitation System

This state benefits financially from ongoing imprisonment without oversight. The Alabama Solution details the alarming scope and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work arrangement that essentially operates as a present-day version of chattel slavery. This program supplies $450 million in goods and services to the government each year for virtually minimal wages.

In the system, incarcerated workers, overwhelmingly Black Alabamians considered unfit for society, make $2 a day—the same daily wage rate set by the state for imprisoned workers in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. These individuals labor more than 12 hours for private companies or government locations including the government building, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.

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

These laborers are statistically less likely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those considered a greater public safety threat. “This illustrates you an understanding of how valuable this free workforce is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to keep individuals imprisoned,” stated the director.

Prison-wide Strike and Ongoing Struggle

The documentary culminates in an remarkable feat of organizing: a state-wide inmates' strike calling for better treatment in October 2022, led by Council and his co-organizer. Illegal mobile video shows how prison authorities ended the strike in 11 days by depriving prisoners en masse, choking the leader, sending personnel to threaten and attack others, and severing contact from strike leaders.

A Country-wide Problem Outside One State

This strike may have ended, but the lesson was clear, and outside the borders of the region. An activist concludes the documentary with a plea for change: “The abuses that are occurring in Alabama are taking place in every region and in the public's name.”

From the reported 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 Los Angeles fires for less than minimum wage, “you see similar situations in the majority of states in the union,” noted the filmmaker.

“This isn’t just one state,” said the co-director. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and rhetoric, and a punitive approach to {everything