Exposing this Disturbing Truth Behind Alabama's Correctional System Abuses

When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama correctional institutions, Easterling mostly prohibits media access, but allowed the crew to record its yearly volunteer-run barbecue. During camera, imprisoned individuals, predominantly Black, celebrated and smiled to live music and religious talks. However behind the scenes, a different narrative emerged—horrific assaults, unreported stabbings, and indescribable violence concealed from public view. Cries for help came from overheated, dirty housing units. As soon as Jarecki moved toward the voices, a prison official halted recording, claiming it was unsafe to speak with the men without a security chaperone.

“It was obvious that there were areas of the facility that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki remembered. “They employ the excuse that it’s all about safety and security, because they don’t want you from comprehending what is occurring. These facilities are similar to secret locations.”

The Stunning Film Exposing Decades of Neglect

That thwarted barbecue event opens The Alabama Solution, a powerful new film made over six years. Collaboratively directed by the director and his partner, the feature-length film exposes a shockingly corrupt system filled with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. It documents prisoners’ herculean struggles, under ongoing danger, to improve conditions deemed “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Covert Recordings Reveal Horrific Conditions

Following their suddenly ended prison tour, the filmmakers made contact with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by long-incarcerated organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a network of sources provided years of footage recorded on contraband cell phones. These recordings is ghastly:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Heaps of human waste
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked surfaces
• Routine guard beatings
• Inmates removed out in remains pouches
• Corridors of individuals unresponsive on substances distributed by staff

One activist begins the film in five years of solitary confinement as punishment for his activism; later in filming, he is almost killed by officers and loses sight in one eye.

The Case of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy

This brutality is, the film shows, standard within the ADOC. As incarcerated witnesses continued to collect evidence, the filmmakers investigated the death of an inmate, who was assaulted beyond recognition by guards inside the Donaldson prison in October 2019. The Alabama Solution traces Davis’s mother, a family member, as she pursues truth from a recalcitrant prison authority. She discovers the official version—that Davis threatened guards with a weapon—on the news. But multiple imprisoned observers told Ray’s attorney that the inmate held only a toy knife and surrendered immediately, only to be beaten by four officers anyway.

A guard, an officer, smashed Davis’s head off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

Following years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray met with Alabama’s “tough on crime” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who informed her that the state would not press criminal counts. The officer, who had numerous separate lawsuits alleging brutality, was given a higher rank. Authorities covered for his legal bills, as well as those of every officer—a portion of the $51m used by the government in the last half-decade to protect officers from wrongdoing claims.

Forced Labor: The Contemporary Exploitation Scheme

This government benefits economically from continued mass incarceration without supervision. The film describes the alarming scope and double standard of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work arrangement that essentially functions as a present-day mutation of historical bondage. The system supplies $450 million in goods and services to the state each year for virtually no pay.

Under the system, incarcerated workers, mostly African American Alabamians considered unfit for the community, make two dollars a 24-hour period—the same pay scale established by the state for imprisoned labor in the year 1927, at the height of racial segregation. They work 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.

“Authorities allow me to labor in the public, but they refuse me to grant release to leave and return 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 important this free workforce is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep individuals locked up,” said Jarecki.

Prison-wide Protest and Continued Struggle

The Alabama Solution concludes in an remarkable feat of activism: a state-wide prisoners’ strike demanding better treatment in 2022, led by an activist and Melvin Ray. Contraband cell phone footage shows how ADOC ended the strike in less than two weeks by starving prisoners en masse, assaulting the leader, deploying soldiers to threaten and attack participants, and severing contact from strike leaders.

The Country-wide Issue Beyond One State

The strike may have failed, but the message was evident, and outside the state of Alabama. Council ends the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are taking place in this state are taking place in every region and in the public's name.”

From the documented abuses at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to the state of California's use of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the danger zones of the Los Angeles fires for less than minimum wage, “one observes comparable situations in most states in the country,” said the filmmaker.

“This isn’t only one state,” added the co-director. “There is a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and rhetoric, and a punitive strategy to {everything