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When documentarians the directors and Charlotte Kaufman visited the Easterling facility in 2019, they encountered a deceptively cheerful atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama's prisons, the prison mostly prohibits journalistic access, but allowed the crew to record its annual community-organized barbecue. During camera, incarcerated men, mostly Black, celebrated and smiled to live music and religious talks. But off camera, a contrasting story emerged—horrific beatings, hidden stabbings, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Pleas for help came from overheated, filthy housing units. When Jarecki approached the sounds, a corrections officer stopped recording, claiming it was unsafe to speak with the inmates without a security escort.

“It was very clear that certain sections of the facility that we were not allowed to see,” the filmmaker remembered. “They use the excuse that everything is about security and security, since they don’t want you from comprehending what they’re doing. These prisons are similar to black sites.”

The Revealing Documentary Exposing Decades of Abuse

That interrupted barbecue event begins the documentary, a powerful new documentary made over half a decade. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the feature-length production exposes a gallingly broken institution filled with unchecked abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable brutality. The film chronicles inmates' herculean efforts, under constant physical threat, to improve conditions deemed “unconstitutional” by the US justice department in 2020.

Secret Recordings Uncover Ghastly Realities

After their suddenly ended Easterling visit, the directors connected with men inside the state prison system. Guided by long-incarcerated activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a network of insiders provided multiple years of footage recorded on illegal mobile devices. These recordings is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Heaps of excrement
• Rotting food and blood-stained surfaces
• Regular officer violence
• Inmates removed out in remains pouches
• Corridors of individuals near-catatonic on substances distributed by staff

Council begins the film in half a decade of solitary confinement as retribution for his activism; later in production, he is nearly beaten to death by officers and loses sight in one eye.

The Case of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy

Such violence is, the film shows, commonplace within the prison system. As incarcerated sources continued to gather evidence, the filmmakers looked into the killing of an inmate, who was assaulted unrecognizably by guards inside the William E Donaldson prison in 2019. The Alabama Solution follows the victim's mother, a family member, as she pursues answers from a uncooperative prison authority. She learns the state’s explanation—that her son threatened guards with a weapon—on the television. But several imprisoned observers told Ray’s attorney that the inmate held only a toy utensil and yielded immediately, only to be beaten by four guards anyway.

One of them, an officer, smashed Davis’s skull off the concrete floor “repeatedly.”

Following three years of evasion, Sandy Ray met with the state's “tough on crime” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who told her that the state would decline to file charges. Gadson, who faced more than 20 individual legal actions claiming excessive force, was given a higher rank. Authorities covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—a portion of the $51 million used by the state of Alabama in the past five years to protect staff from misconduct lawsuits.

Compulsory Labor: A Contemporary Slavery System

The government profits economically from ongoing mass incarceration without supervision. The Alabama Solution details the alarming scope and double standard of the ADOC’s work initiative, a forced-labor system that essentially operates as a modern-day mutation of historical bondage. This program provides $450 million in goods and work to the government each year for almost minimal wages.

In the system, incarcerated laborers, mostly Black residents considered unfit for society, make two dollars a 24-hour period—the same daily wage rate set by the state for imprisoned workers in 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. These individuals labor upwards of 12 hours for corporate entities or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and municipal offices.

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

Such workers are numerically less likely to be released than those who are not, even those considered a higher security threat. “This illustrates you an understanding of how important this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to keep individuals locked up,” stated Jarecki.

Prison-wide Strike and Continued Fight

The Alabama Solution culminates in an remarkable achievement of activism: a system-wide inmates' work stoppage demanding better conditions in 2022, led by Council and Melvin Ray. Illegal mobile video shows how prison authorities broke the strike in less than two weeks by depriving inmates collectively, assaulting Council, sending personnel to intimidate and beat others, and cutting off communication from organizers.

The Country-wide Issue Beyond One State

This protest may have failed, but the message was clear, and beyond the borders of the region. An activist concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are taking place in Alabama are taking place in every state and in the public's name.”

From the reported abuses at New York’s a prison facility, to the state of California's use of 1,100 incarcerated emergency responders to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for below standard pay, “one observes similar things in the majority of jurisdictions in the country,” said Jarecki.

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