Uncovering the Shocking Truth Behind Alabama's Correctional System Abuses

When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director entered the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly pleasant atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama's prisons, Easterling largely bans media entry, but allowed the crew to film its yearly volunteer-run cookout. During film, imprisoned individuals, predominantly African American, danced and laughed to musical performances and sermons. But off camera, a contrasting story surfaced—horrific assaults, hidden stabbings, and unimaginable violence concealed from public view. Pleas for assistance were heard from overheated, filthy housing units. When Jarecki moved toward the voices, a prison official halted filming, stating it was unsafe to speak with the inmates without a police chaperone.

“It was very clear that there were areas of the prison that we were forbidden to view,” Jarecki recalled. “They use the excuse that everything is about security and safety, since they aim to prevent you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are similar to black sites.”

The Revealing Film Uncovering Decades of Neglect

That interrupted cookout event begins the documentary, a stunning new film produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and his partner, the feature-length film reveals a shockingly broken institution filled with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable brutality. The film chronicles prisoners’ herculean efforts, under ongoing danger, to change conditions declared “unconstitutional” by the US justice department in 2020.

Covert Footage Uncover Horrific Realities

After their abruptly ended Easterling tour, the filmmakers made contact with men inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a network of sources provided years of footage recorded on illegal mobile devices. The footage is disturbing:

• Rat-infested cells
• Heaps of human waste
• Rotting food and blood-streaked surfaces
• Routine guard beatings
• Men carried out in remains pouches
• Hallways of men near-catatonic on substances distributed by staff

One activist starts the documentary in five years of isolation as punishment for his organizing; later in filming, he is nearly killed by guards and loses vision in an eye.

The Case of Steven Davis: Violence and Obfuscation

Such violence is, we learn, commonplace within the prison system. As imprisoned sources continued to collect evidence, the filmmakers 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 the victim's mother, a family member, as she seeks answers from a uncooperative ADOC. She discovers the state’s version—that her son menaced officers with a knife—on the news. However several imprisoned witnesses informed Ray’s attorney that the inmate held only a toy utensil and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by multiple guards anyway.

A guard, Roderick Gadson, smashed the inmate's head off the concrete floor “like a basketball.”

Following three years of obfuscation, the mother met with the state's “law-and-order” attorney general Steve Marshall, who told her that the state would not press charges. The officer, who faced more than 20 individual lawsuits alleging brutality, was given a higher rank. The state covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every guard—a portion of the $51 million spent by the government in the past five years to defend officers from wrongdoing lawsuits.

Compulsory Labor: A Contemporary Slavery Scheme

The state profits economically from ongoing mass incarceration without supervision. The film details the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s work initiative, a compulsory-work system that essentially functions as a present-day version of historical bondage. This program supplies $450 million in goods and services to the government each year for virtually no pay.

Under the program, imprisoned workers, mostly Black residents deemed unfit for the community, make two dollars a day—the identical daily wage rate set by Alabama for incarcerated workers in the year 1927, at the height of racial segregation. These individuals labor more than 12 hours for corporate entities or public sites including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

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

These workers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are not, even those considered a greater public safety risk. “That gives you an understanding of how valuable this low-cost labor is to the state, and how important it is for them to maintain individuals locked up,” stated Jarecki.

State-wide Strike and Continued Fight

The Alabama Solution culminates in an incredible feat of organizing: a state-wide inmates' work stoppage calling for improved conditions in October 2022, led by Council and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone video shows how prison authorities broke the protest in 11 days by depriving inmates collectively, choking the leader, deploying soldiers to threaten and beat others, and cutting off communication from strike leaders.

A National Problem Outside Alabama

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

Starting with the reported abuses at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to the state of California's use of 1,100 imprisoned emergency responders to the frontlines of the Los Angeles fires for less than minimum wage, “one observes comparable situations in the majority of states in the country,” said Jarecki.

“This is not just one state,” added Kaufman. “There is a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything