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When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman visited the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they witnessed a deceptively cheerful atmosphere. Like the state's Alabama correctional institutions, the prison mostly bans media access, but permitted the filmmakers to record its yearly community-organized cookout. On film, imprisoned men, predominantly Black, celebrated and smiled to live music and sermons. But off camera, a different narrative surfaced—terrifying beatings, hidden stabbings, and indescribable brutality concealed from public view. Cries for assistance came from overheated, filthy dorms. When the director moved toward the sounds, a corrections officer halted filming, claiming it was unsafe to speak with the inmates without a police escort.

“It became apparent that there were areas of the prison that we were forbidden to view,” the filmmaker remembered. “They use the idea that it’s all about security and security, since they don’t want you from comprehending what they’re doing. These facilities are like secret locations.”

The Stunning Documentary Exposing Decades of Abuse

That interrupted cookout meeting begins the documentary, a powerful new documentary made over six years. Co-directed by the director and Kaufman, the feature-length film reveals a shockingly corrupt system filled with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. It chronicles prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under constant danger, to change situations declared “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Secret Recordings Uncover Horrific Realities

After their abruptly ended prison visit, the filmmakers connected with men inside the state prison system. Led by veteran activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a group of sources provided years of evidence recorded on contraband mobile devices. These recordings is ghastly:

• Rat-infested cells
• Piles of excrement
• Rotting food and blood-stained surfaces
• Routine officer beatings
• Men carried out in body bags
• Hallways of men unresponsive on drugs distributed by officers

One activist begins the documentary in half a decade of solitary confinement as retribution for his organizing; subsequently in filming, he is almost killed by officers and suffers sight in one eye.

A Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy

Such violence is, we learn, standard within the ADOC. As imprisoned witnesses persisted to collect evidence, the filmmakers looked into the death of Steven Davis, who was beaten unrecognizably by guards inside the William E Donaldson prison in October 2019. The Alabama Solution follows Davis’s parent, a family member, as she pursues answers from a recalcitrant prison authority. The mother learns the official version—that Davis menaced guards with a weapon—on the news. However several imprisoned observers told the family's lawyer that Davis wielded only a toy utensil and yielded at once, only to be assaulted by multiple guards regardless.

A guard, an officer, stomped the inmate's head off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

Following years of obfuscation, the mother spoke with Alabama’s “tough on crime” attorney general a state official, who informed her that the authorities would decline to file charges. The officer, who faced numerous separate legal actions alleging excessive force, was given a higher rank. Authorities covered for his legal bills, as well as those of every guard—a portion of the $51 million spent by the government in the past five years to defend staff from misconduct claims.

Compulsory Labor: The Modern-Day Exploitation Scheme

The government benefits economically from ongoing imprisonment without oversight. The Alabama Solution details the alarming scope and double standard of the prison system's labor program, a compulsory-work arrangement that essentially operates as a present-day mutation of chattel slavery. This program provides $450 million in products and work to the state annually for almost minimal wages.

In the system, imprisoned workers, mostly Black residents considered unsuitable for the community, make $2 a day—the identical pay scale set by Alabama for incarcerated workers in the year 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. They labor upwards of 12 hours for corporate entities or government locations including the government building, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.

“They trust me to labor in the public, but they refuse me to give me release to leave and go home to my loved ones.”

These laborers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those considered a higher public safety risk. “This illustrates you an idea of how important this free workforce is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to maintain people locked up,” said Jarecki.

State-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The Alabama Solution concludes in an remarkable feat of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ work stoppage demanding better treatment in 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Illegal cell phone video reveals how ADOC ended the strike in 11 days by depriving prisoners en masse, assaulting the leader, sending personnel to intimidate and beat participants, and severing communication from strike leaders.

The Country-wide Issue Beyond One State

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

From the documented abuses at the state of New York's a prison facility, to California’s deployment of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the danger zones of the LA wildfires for below minimum wage, “one observes comparable things in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” noted the filmmaker.

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