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When filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman entered the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama prisons, Easterling mostly prohibits journalistic entry, but allowed the crew to record its annual community-organized barbecue. During film, imprisoned men, mostly African American, celebrated and laughed to live music and sermons. However off camera, a different narrative emerged—terrifying beatings, hidden stabbings, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Pleas for assistance came from sweltering, dirty housing units. When the director approached the voices, a corrections officer halted filming, claiming it was dangerous to interact with the inmates without a police escort.

“It was obvious that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki remembered. “They use the excuse that it’s all about safety and security, because they don’t want you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are like black sites.”

A Revealing Film Exposing Decades of Neglect

This thwarted cookout meeting begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary produced over six years. Co-directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the two-hour production exposes a gallingly broken institution rife with unregulated abuse, compulsory work, and extreme brutality. It documents inmates' herculean efforts, under ongoing danger, to improve conditions deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Secret Recordings Reveal Horrific Realities

Following their suddenly ended prison tour, the filmmakers made contact with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by long-incarcerated organizers Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council, a network of sources provided years of evidence filmed on contraband mobile devices. The footage is disturbing:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Piles of human waste
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked floors
• Regular guard beatings
• Inmates removed out in remains pouches
• Hallways of individuals unresponsive on substances distributed by officers

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

The Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Secrecy

Such violence is, the film shows, commonplace within the ADOC. While incarcerated sources continued to collect proof, the directors looked into the death of Steven Davis, who was assaulted unrecognizably by officers inside the Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The Alabama Solution traces the victim's parent, Sandy Ray, as she seeks answers from a uncooperative ADOC. The mother discovers the official explanation—that her son menaced guards with a knife—on the television. But several incarcerated witnesses told Ray’s attorney that the inmate wielded only a plastic utensil and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by multiple officers regardless.

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

Following years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray spoke with Alabama’s “law-and-order” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who told her that the state would decline to file charges. Gadson, who had numerous individual lawsuits alleging brutality, was given a higher rank. The state paid for his legal bills, as well as those of every guard—a portion of the $51m spent by the government in the last half-decade to defend officers from wrongdoing claims.

Compulsory Labor: The Modern-Day Exploitation System

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

In the system, incarcerated laborers, mostly African American residents deemed unsuitable for the community, earn two dollars a 24-hour period—the identical pay scale set by the state for imprisoned labor in the year 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. These individuals labor upwards of half a day for private companies or government locations including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“They trust me to work in the community, but they refuse me to grant release to get out and return to my loved ones.”

These laborers are statistically less likely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those deemed a higher security threat. “That gives you an idea of how valuable this free workforce is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep individuals locked up,” stated Jarecki.

State-wide Strike and Continued Fight

The Alabama Solution culminates in an remarkable achievement of organizing: a system-wide inmates' work stoppage demanding improved conditions in October 2022, organized by an activist and Melvin Ray. Contraband mobile video reveals how ADOC ended the strike in 11 days by starving prisoners collectively, choking Council, deploying soldiers to threaten and attack participants, and cutting off contact from organizers.

A National Issue Outside One State

The strike may have failed, but the message was clear, and outside the borders of the region. Council ends the film with a call to action: “The abuses that are taking place in this state are happening in every region and in the public's behalf.”

From the reported violations at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to the state of California's deployment of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the danger zones of the LA fires for less than standard pay, “you see comparable situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” noted Jarecki.

“This is not only Alabama,” added the co-director. “There is a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ policy and language, and a punitive approach to {everything