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When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director entered Easterling prison in 2019, they encountered a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Like other Alabama's prisons, Easterling mostly bans media entry, but permitted the crew to record its annual volunteer-run cookout. During film, incarcerated men, mostly African American, danced and laughed to musical performances and sermons. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story emerged—horrific assaults, unreported violent attacks, and unimaginable brutality swept under the rug. Pleas for help were heard from sweltering, filthy dorms. As soon as Jarecki moved toward the sounds, a corrections officer halted recording, stating it was dangerous to interact with the inmates without a police chaperone.

“It was very clear that certain sections of the facility that we were not allowed to view,” the filmmaker recalled. “They use the idea that everything is about safety and safety, because they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are similar to black sites.”

The Stunning Film Exposing Years of Abuse

That thwarted barbecue event begins The Alabama Solution, a powerful new documentary produced over six years. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour production reveals a shockingly broken system filled with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. It chronicles inmates' tremendous struggles, under ongoing danger, to change conditions declared “illegal” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Covert Footage Reveal Ghastly Realities

Following their suddenly ended prison visit, the filmmakers connected with men inside the state prison system. Led by long-incarcerated organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a group of insiders supplied years of footage recorded on illegal mobile devices. The footage is disturbing:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Piles of excrement
• Rotting meals and blood-stained floors
• Regular officer beatings
• Inmates removed out in remains pouches
• Corridors of individuals unresponsive on substances distributed by officers

Council starts the documentary in half a decade of isolation as punishment for his organizing; later in filming, he is almost killed by officers and loses vision in one eye.

A Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Secrecy

This brutality is, we learn, commonplace within the ADOC. While incarcerated sources continued to collect evidence, the filmmakers looked into the killing of an inmate, who was beaten beyond recognition by officers inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The Alabama Solution traces the victim's mother, Sandy Ray, as she pursues truth from a uncooperative ADOC. She discovers the official explanation—that Davis menaced guards with a weapon—on the news. However multiple incarcerated witnesses told the family's lawyer that Davis wielded only a plastic knife and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by four officers regardless.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, smashed the inmate's head off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

Following years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray spoke with the state's “tough on crime” attorney general Steve Marshall, who told her that the state would decline to file criminal counts. The officer, who had more than 20 individual lawsuits claiming brutality, was promoted. The state covered for his legal bills, as well as those of all other officer—part of the $51m spent by the state of Alabama in the past five years to defend officers from misconduct lawsuits.

Forced Labor: The Modern-Day Exploitation Scheme

The government profits economically from continued mass incarceration without supervision. The Alabama Solution details the shocking scope and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work arrangement that essentially functions as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. This program provides $450 million in goods and work to the government each year for virtually minimal wages.

Under the system, incarcerated workers, mostly Black residents considered unfit for society, make two dollars a day—the identical pay scale set by the state for imprisoned labor in the year 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. These individuals work upwards of half a day for private companies or government locations including the government building, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

“Authorities allow me to work in the public, but they don’t trust me to grant parole to leave and go home to my loved ones.”

These laborers are numerically less likely to be paroled than those who are not, even those considered a greater public safety threat. “This illustrates you an understanding of how valuable this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep individuals locked up,” said the director.

Prison-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The Alabama Solution culminates in an incredible feat of organizing: a state-wide prisoners’ strike demanding improved conditions in October 2022, organized by Council and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone video shows how prison authorities ended the protest in less than two weeks by depriving prisoners en masse, choking Council, deploying soldiers to threaten and beat others, and cutting off contact from organizers.

The Country-wide Issue Outside Alabama

The strike may have failed, but the lesson was clear, and beyond the state of the region. Council concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The abuses that are occurring in this state are happening in your region and in the public's name.”

Starting with the reported violations at New York’s Rikers Island, to the state of California's use of over a thousand incarcerated emergency responders to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for less than minimum wage, “you see comparable things in most states in the country,” noted the filmmaker.

“This is not only one state,” added the co-director. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and language, and a retributive strategy to {everything