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As filmmakers the directors and Charlotte Kaufman visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a deceptively cheerful atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama correctional institutions, Easterling largely prohibits journalistic entry, but permitted the filmmakers to record its yearly volunteer-run barbecue. On film, imprisoned individuals, predominantly African American, celebrated and smiled to musical performances and sermons. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story emerged—horrific beatings, hidden violent attacks, and unimaginable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for help came from sweltering, filthy housing units. As soon as the director approached the sounds, a corrections officer stopped recording, claiming it was unsafe to speak with the men without a police escort.

“It became apparent that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to view,” the filmmaker recalled. “They employ the idea that it’s all about security and security, since they don’t want you from understanding what is occurring. These prisons are like black sites.”

A Stunning Documentary Exposing Years of Neglect

That interrupted cookout meeting opens The Alabama Solution, a powerful new documentary produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by the director and Kaufman, the feature-length production reveals a shockingly broken system rife with unregulated mistreatment, compulsory work, and extreme cruelty. It chronicles inmates' herculean efforts, under constant physical threat, to improve conditions declared “illegal” by the US justice department in the year 2020.

Secret Recordings Uncover Ghastly Conditions

Following their abruptly ended Easterling visit, the filmmakers connected with men inside the state prison system. Led by long-incarcerated activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a group of sources provided multiple years of evidence recorded on contraband cell phones. These recordings is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden living spaces
• Heaps of excrement
• Spoiled food and blood-stained surfaces
• Regular guard beatings
• Men carried out in body bags
• Hallways of men unresponsive on drugs distributed by officers

Council starts the film in half a decade of solitary confinement as punishment for his organizing; later in production, he is nearly killed by guards and loses vision in one eye.

The Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Secrecy

This brutality is, we learn, commonplace within the prison system. While imprisoned witnesses continued to gather proof, the directors investigated the killing of an inmate, who was assaulted beyond recognition by officers inside the William E Donaldson prison in 2019. The documentary follows Davis’s parent, Sandy Ray, as she pursues answers from a uncooperative prison authority. The mother learns the state’s version—that Davis menaced officers with a knife—on the news. But multiple imprisoned witnesses told Ray’s lawyer that the inmate held only a plastic knife and yielded at once, only to be beaten by four officers regardless.

A guard, Roderick Gadson, stomped the inmate's head off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

Following years of evasion, the mother met with the state's “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who told her that the authorities would not press charges. The officer, who had numerous individual legal actions claiming brutality, was given a higher rank. Authorities paid for his legal bills, as well as those of all other guard—part of the $51m used by the state of Alabama in the past five years to protect officers from wrongdoing lawsuits.

Forced Labor: A Contemporary Slavery System

This state benefits financially from ongoing imprisonment without supervision. The film describes the shocking extent and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s work initiative, a compulsory-work arrangement that essentially functions as a present-day mutation of historical bondage. This program provides $450 million in products and work to the state annually for virtually no pay.

In the system, incarcerated laborers, mostly African American residents deemed unsuitable for society, earn $2 a 24-hour period—the identical daily wage rate established by the state for incarcerated labor in the year 1927, at the height of racial segregation. They work upwards of 12 hours for private companies or public sites including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.

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

Such workers are numerically less likely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those deemed a greater security risk. “This illustrates you an understanding of how valuable this free labor is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to maintain people locked up,” said Jarecki.

Prison-wide Strike and Ongoing Struggle

The documentary culminates in an remarkable achievement of organizing: a system-wide inmates' work stoppage calling for better treatment in October 2022, organized by Council and his co-organizer. Illegal mobile footage reveals how ADOC broke the strike in 11 days by starving inmates en masse, assaulting Council, sending personnel to intimidate and attack others, and cutting off communication from strike leaders.

A National Problem Outside Alabama

This strike may have ended, but the lesson was evident, and outside the borders of Alabama. Council ends the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are occurring in Alabama are happening in every state and in your name.”

Starting with the reported abuses at New York’s a prison facility, to California’s deployment of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the frontlines of the Los Angeles wildfires for less than minimum wage, “you see similar things in most jurisdictions in the country,” said the filmmaker.

“This is not only one state,” added Kaufman. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and language, and a retributive strategy to {everything