Exposing this Disturbing Reality Within the Alabama Prison Facility Abuses
As filmmakers the directors and Charlotte Kaufman entered Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly pleasant scene. Like other Alabama prisons, the prison mostly prohibits journalistic entry, but permitted the filmmakers to film its annual volunteer-run barbecue. On film, incarcerated individuals, mostly Black, danced and laughed to live music and religious talks. But behind the scenes, a different story emerged—terrifying beatings, unreported stabbings, and unimaginable violence concealed from public view. Cries for assistance were heard from overheated, dirty dorms. As soon as Jarecki approached the sounds, a prison official stopped filming, stating it was unsafe to interact with the inmates without a security escort.
“It was obvious that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki recalled. “They employ the excuse that it’s all about security and safety, since they aim to prevent you from understanding what they’re doing. These prisons are similar to black sites.”
The Revealing Film Uncovering Years of Neglect
That interrupted cookout event opens The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary made over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and his partner, the two-hour production reveals a gallingly corrupt institution filled with unchecked abuse, forced labor, and extreme brutality. It chronicles inmates' tremendous efforts, under ongoing danger, to change situations deemed “unconstitutional” by the US justice department in the year 2020.
Covert Recordings Uncover Ghastly Realities
Following their abruptly ended Easterling tour, the filmmakers made contact with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by veteran activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a network of sources supplied multiple years of evidence filmed on contraband mobile devices. The footage is disturbing:
- Rat-infested living spaces
- Heaps of human waste
- Spoiled food and blood-streaked surfaces
- Routine officer violence
- Men removed out in remains pouches
- Hallways of individuals near-catatonic on substances sold by staff
Council starts the documentary in five years of isolation as retribution for his activism; subsequently in filming, he is almost beaten to death by officers and loses vision in one eye.
The Case of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy
Such brutality is, we learn, standard within the ADOC. As incarcerated sources persisted to collect proof, the filmmakers investigated the death of Steven Davis, who was assaulted unrecognizably by officers inside the Donaldson prison in 2019. The Alabama Solution traces the victim's mother, a family member, as she pursues answers from a recalcitrant prison authority. She discovers the official explanation—that Davis menaced officers with a knife—on the news. But several incarcerated observers informed the family's lawyer that Davis wielded only a plastic knife and surrendered immediately, only to be beaten by multiple guards anyway.
A guard, Roderick Gadson, stomped the inmate's skull off the concrete floor “repeatedly.”
After years of evasion, the mother spoke with the state's “law-and-order” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who informed her that the state would decline to file charges. The officer, who had numerous separate lawsuits claiming brutality, was given a higher rank. The state paid for his legal bills, as well as those of all other officer—a portion of the $51m spent by the government in the last half-decade to protect staff from misconduct lawsuits.
Forced Work: A Contemporary Exploitation Scheme
The state benefits financially from ongoing imprisonment without oversight. The film describes the alarming scope and double standard of the ADOC’s labor program, a forced-labor system that effectively operates as a present-day mutation of historical bondage. The system provides $450 million in goods and work to the government annually for virtually minimal wages.
Under the program, incarcerated laborers, mostly Black Alabamians deemed unfit for the community, make two dollars a 24-hour period—the same pay scale set by Alabama for imprisoned labor in the year 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. These individuals work upwards of 12 hours for corporate entities or public sites including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.
“Authorities allow me to labor in the public, but they don’t trust me to grant parole to leave and return to my family.”
Such workers are statistically more unlikely to be released than those who are not, even those considered a greater security threat. “That gives you an understanding of how important this low-cost workforce is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to maintain individuals imprisoned,” stated the director.
State-wide Strike and Ongoing Fight
The Alabama Solution culminates in an remarkable achievement of organizing: a state-wide inmates' work stoppage calling for improved treatment in October 2022, led by Council and Melvin Ray. Contraband cell phone footage shows how prison authorities ended the strike in 11 days by starving prisoners collectively, choking Council, sending soldiers to intimidate and attack others, and severing communication from strike leaders.
A National Issue Beyond Alabama
This protest may have failed, but the message was clear, and beyond the state of Alabama. Council concludes the film with a call to action: “The abuses that are taking place in this state are taking place in every state and in your behalf.”
Starting with the reported violations at the state of New York's a prison facility, to the state of California's deployment of 1,100 incarcerated emergency responders to the frontlines of the LA fires for below minimum wage, “one observes comparable situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” noted the filmmaker.
“This isn’t only one state,” said Kaufman. “There is a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and language, and a retributive approach to {everything
