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As documentarians the directors and his co-director entered Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly pleasant atmosphere. Like other Alabama's correctional institutions, the prison mostly bans media entry, but allowed the crew to record its annual community-organized barbecue. On film, imprisoned individuals, mostly African American, danced and smiled to musical performances and religious talks. But behind the scenes, a different story emerged—horrific beatings, hidden stabbings, and unimaginable violence swept under the rug. Pleas for assistance came from sweltering, filthy housing units. As soon as Jarecki approached the voices, a prison official stopped recording, claiming it was unsafe to interact with the inmates without a police escort.

“It was very clear that certain sections of the facility that we were forbidden to see,” the filmmaker recalled. “They use the excuse that it’s all about safety and safety, since they aim to prevent you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are like secret locations.”

A Stunning Documentary Exposing Decades of Abuse

That thwarted barbecue meeting opens the documentary, a stunning new documentary produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and his partner, the two-hour production reveals a shockingly corrupt system filled with unregulated abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable brutality. It chronicles prisoners’ herculean struggles, under constant danger, to improve conditions declared “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Covert Recordings Reveal Ghastly Realities

After their abruptly ended Easterling visit, the filmmakers made contact with individuals inside the state prison system. Led by veteran organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a network of sources provided years of evidence recorded on contraband cell phones. The footage is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden living spaces
• Heaps of excrement
• Spoiled food and blood-streaked surfaces
• Routine officer violence
• Men removed out in body bags
• Hallways of individuals near-catatonic on drugs distributed by officers

Council begins the film in half a decade of solitary confinement as punishment for his organizing; subsequently in filming, he is nearly killed by officers and loses vision in an eye.

The Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Obfuscation

Such brutality is, we learn, commonplace within the prison system. While imprisoned sources persisted to gather evidence, the directors looked into the killing of an inmate, who was beaten unrecognizably by officers inside the William E Donaldson prison in 2019. The Alabama Solution traces the victim's mother, a family member, as she seeks truth from a uncooperative prison authority. The mother learns the official explanation—that her son threatened guards with a weapon—on the news. But several incarcerated witnesses informed Ray’s lawyer that Davis held only a plastic knife and yielded immediately, only to be beaten by multiple guards anyway.

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

Following three years of obfuscation, the mother spoke with Alabama’s “law-and-order” attorney general Steve Marshall, who told her that the authorities would decline to file charges. The officer, who had numerous separate lawsuits claiming 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 used by the state of Alabama in the past five years to defend officers from misconduct lawsuits.

Compulsory Labor: A Contemporary Exploitation System

The state profits financially from ongoing imprisonment without supervision. The Alabama Solution details the shocking extent and double standard of the prison system's labor program, a forced-labor system that effectively operates as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. The system provides $450 million in products and work to the government each year for virtually minimal wages.

In the program, imprisoned laborers, overwhelmingly Black residents deemed unsuitable for the community, earn two dollars a 24-hour period—the identical pay scale set by Alabama for incarcerated workers in 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. They work more than 12 hours for corporate entities or public sites including the state capitol, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.

“They trust me to work in the community, but they refuse me to give me release to get out and go home to my family.”

These workers are numerically less likely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those deemed a higher public safety threat. “That gives you an idea of how valuable this free labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep individuals imprisoned,” said the director.

Prison-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The documentary culminates in an incredible feat of organizing: a system-wide inmates' work stoppage calling for better conditions in 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Illegal mobile footage reveals how prison authorities ended the protest in less than two weeks by starving inmates collectively, assaulting the leader, sending personnel to intimidate and beat others, and cutting off communication from organizers.

A Country-wide Problem Beyond One State

The strike may have ended, but the lesson was evident, and beyond the state of the region. Council ends the documentary with a call to action: “The abuses that are taking place in Alabama are taking place in your region and in the public's behalf.”

Starting with the reported violations at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to California’s deployment of over a thousand incarcerated firefighters to the danger zones of the Los Angeles wildfires for below standard pay, “you see comparable things in most jurisdictions in the union,” said Jarecki.

“This is not just Alabama,” added the co-director. “There is a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and language, and a retributive strategy to {everything