Revealing this Appalling Truth Behind Alabama's Prison System Abuses

When filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a deceptively cheerful atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama correctional institutions, the prison largely bans media entry, but permitted the filmmakers to record its yearly volunteer-run barbecue. On film, incarcerated individuals, predominantly Black, celebrated and laughed to live music and religious talks. However behind the scenes, a different story emerged—terrifying beatings, hidden stabbings, and indescribable brutality concealed from public view. Cries for assistance came from overheated, filthy housing units. As soon as the director moved toward the voices, a corrections officer stopped recording, stating it was dangerous to interact with the inmates without a police chaperone.

“It became apparent that certain sections of the facility that we were not allowed to see,” the filmmaker remembered. “They use the idea that everything is about safety and safety, because they don’t want you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are like secret locations.”

The Revealing Film Uncovering Years of Abuse

This interrupted cookout event begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new film made over half a decade. Co-directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the feature-length production reveals a gallingly broken system filled with unchecked abuse, forced labor, and unimaginable brutality. The film documents inmates' herculean struggles, under ongoing physical threat, to change conditions declared “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Covert Recordings Reveal Horrific Conditions

Following their suddenly ended Easterling visit, the directors connected with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by long-incarcerated organizers Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council, a network of insiders provided multiple years of footage recorded on contraband cell phones. These recordings is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Heaps of excrement
• Spoiled food and blood-stained surfaces
• Routine officer beatings
• Inmates removed out in body bags
• Corridors of men unresponsive on drugs sold by officers

One activist begins the film in half a decade of isolation as punishment for his organizing; later in production, he is nearly killed by officers and suffers sight in an eye.

A Case of Steven Davis: Violence and Obfuscation

This violence is, the film shows, standard within the prison system. As imprisoned witnesses persisted to collect evidence, the directors investigated the death of Steven Davis, who was assaulted unrecognizably by officers inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The Alabama Solution follows the victim's mother, Sandy Ray, as she seeks truth from a recalcitrant ADOC. She learns the state’s version—that Davis menaced officers with a weapon—on the television. But several imprisoned witnesses told the family's attorney that Davis held only a plastic knife and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by multiple officers anyway.

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

Following three years of evasion, the mother met with Alabama’s “tough on crime” attorney general Steve Marshall, who informed her that the authorities would not press charges. The officer, who had more than 20 separate legal actions alleging brutality, was promoted. The state covered for his legal bills, as well as those of every guard—part of the $51 million used by the government in the last half-decade to protect officers from misconduct claims.

Compulsory Work: The Modern-Day Exploitation Scheme

This state profits financially from continued mass incarceration without oversight. The film describes the shocking scope and hypocrisy of the prison system's labor program, a compulsory-work arrangement that essentially functions as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. This program provides $450m in products and work to the state each year for almost minimal wages.

Under the program, incarcerated workers, overwhelmingly African American Alabamians considered unsuitable for the community, make two dollars a 24-hour period—the same pay scale established by the state for incarcerated labor in the year 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. These individuals work upwards of 12 hours for private companies or government locations including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“Authorities allow me to labor in the community, but they don’t trust me to grant release to get out and return to my family.”

Such workers are statistically less likely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those considered a greater public safety risk. “This illustrates you an understanding of how valuable this free workforce is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep people imprisoned,” stated the director.

State-wide Protest and Ongoing Fight

The Alabama Solution concludes in an incredible achievement of organizing: a state-wide prisoners’ strike demanding better conditions in October 2022, led by an activist and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone video shows how ADOC ended the strike in 11 days by starving inmates en masse, assaulting Council, sending soldiers to intimidate and beat participants, and severing contact from strike leaders.

A National Issue Beyond One State

This strike may have failed, but the lesson was evident, and outside the borders of the region. An activist concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are occurring in Alabama are taking place in your region and in the public's behalf.”

Starting with the documented abuses at New York’s a prison facility, to the state of California's deployment of 1,100 imprisoned emergency responders to the danger zones of the LA fires for less than standard pay, “one observes comparable things in the majority of states in the country,” noted Jarecki.

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