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When documentarians the directors and Charlotte Kaufman visited the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama correctional institutions, Easterling mostly prohibits media entry, but allowed the filmmakers to film its yearly community-organized cookout. On film, incarcerated individuals, mostly African American, celebrated and laughed to musical performances and religious talks. However behind the scenes, a different narrative surfaced—terrifying assaults, unreported violent attacks, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for assistance were heard from overheated, dirty housing units. When Jarecki moved toward the sounds, a prison official halted recording, stating it was dangerous to interact with the men without a police 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 safety and security, since they don’t want you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are like black sites.”

A Revealing Documentary Uncovering Decades of Neglect

This interrupted barbecue event opens The Alabama Solution, a stunning new film made over half a decade. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the feature-length production reveals a gallingly corrupt institution rife with unchecked abuse, forced labor, and unimaginable brutality. It documents prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under ongoing danger, to improve conditions declared “illegal” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Covert Footage Uncover Horrific Realities

After their suddenly ended prison visit, the directors connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by long-incarcerated organizers Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council, a network of sources supplied multiple years of evidence filmed on contraband mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested cells
• Piles of excrement
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked surfaces
• Routine guard violence
• Inmates carried out in remains pouches
• Hallways of men unresponsive on drugs sold by staff

Council begins the film in half a decade of isolation as retribution for his activism; later in filming, he is nearly killed by guards and loses vision in an eye.

The Case of One Inmate: Violence and Secrecy

This violence is, we learn, standard within the prison system. While incarcerated sources continued to collect evidence, the filmmakers looked into the death of Steven Davis, who was assaulted unrecognizably by officers inside the Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The Alabama Solution traces the victim's mother, a family member, as she pursues truth from a uncooperative prison authority. She learns the state’s version—that her son menaced guards with a weapon—on the television. However multiple imprisoned observers informed the family's attorney that the inmate held only a toy knife and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by four guards anyway.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, stomped Davis’s head off the concrete floor “like a basketball.”

Following three years of obfuscation, the mother met with the state's “tough on crime” attorney general a state official, who informed her that the state would decline to file charges. Gadson, who had more than 20 separate legal actions alleging brutality, was given a higher rank. The state paid for his defense costs, as well as those of all other guard—a portion of the $51m used by the government in the last half-decade to protect staff from wrongdoing claims.

Forced Labor: A Modern-Day Exploitation Scheme

This state benefits financially from continued imprisonment without oversight. The Alabama Solution details the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s labor program, a compulsory-work arrangement that essentially functions as a present-day version of chattel slavery. The system supplies $450 million in goods and services to the state annually for virtually minimal wages.

In the system, incarcerated laborers, mostly African American Alabamians deemed unsuitable for society, make $2 a 24-hour period—the same pay scale set by Alabama for imprisoned labor in the year 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. They labor upwards of 12 hours for private companies or government locations including the government building, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“They trust me to labor in the public, but they don’t trust me to grant release to leave and return to my loved ones.”

These laborers are statistically more unlikely to be released than those who are not, even those considered a greater security risk. “This illustrates you an idea of how valuable this low-cost labor is to the state, and how critical it is for them to keep individuals locked up,” stated Jarecki.

State-wide Protest and Ongoing Fight

The Alabama Solution culminates in an remarkable feat of organizing: a state-wide inmates' strike calling for improved conditions in October 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Contraband mobile video shows how ADOC broke the protest in 11 days by starving inmates collectively, choking the leader, deploying soldiers to intimidate and beat participants, and cutting off communication from organizers.

The Country-wide Problem Outside One State

This protest may have failed, but the message was evident, and beyond the borders of Alabama. An activist concludes the film with a plea for change: “The things that are taking place in this state are taking place in every region and in your behalf.”

Starting with the reported violations at New York’s Rikers Island, to the state of California's use of 1,100 incarcerated firefighters to the danger zones of the Los Angeles fires for less than minimum wage, “one observes comparable situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the country,” said Jarecki.

“This isn’t just Alabama,” said the co-director. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and rhetoric, and a punitive approach to {everything