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When filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama prisons, Easterling largely bans media entry, but allowed the crew to film its yearly volunteer-run cookout. During camera, incarcerated individuals, predominantly African American, danced and laughed to musical performances and religious talks. However off camera, a contrasting narrative emerged—terrifying beatings, hidden stabbings, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for help came from overheated, filthy housing units. As soon as Jarecki moved toward the voices, a prison official halted recording, claiming it was dangerous to speak with the inmates without a security chaperone.

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

A Revealing Film Uncovering Years of Abuse

This thwarted cookout meeting begins the documentary, a stunning new film made over six years. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and his partner, the two-hour film exposes a shockingly corrupt system rife with unregulated abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable brutality. It documents inmates' herculean struggles, under ongoing physical threat, to change conditions deemed “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Secret Footage Reveal Horrific Realities

Following their suddenly ended Easterling tour, the directors made contact with men inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a network of insiders provided years of evidence filmed on contraband mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested cells
• Piles of human waste
• Spoiled food and blood-stained floors
• Routine officer beatings
• Men removed out in body bags
• Hallways of men unresponsive on drugs sold by staff

Council starts the film in five years of solitary confinement as retribution for his organizing; later in production, he is almost beaten to death by guards and loses sight in one eye.

A Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Obfuscation

This brutality is, the film shows, commonplace within the ADOC. As incarcerated witnesses persisted to collect evidence, the filmmakers looked into the killing of Steven Davis, who was beaten beyond recognition by officers inside the William E Donaldson prison in 2019. The documentary follows Davis’s parent, Sandy Ray, as she seeks answers from a uncooperative prison authority. She discovers the official explanation—that her son threatened guards with a knife—on the news. But multiple imprisoned witnesses informed the family's lawyer that Davis wielded only a toy knife and surrendered at once, only to be beaten by four guards regardless.

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

Following three years of evasion, the mother spoke with Alabama’s “law-and-order” attorney general a state official, who informed her that the authorities would decline to file charges. The officer, who faced numerous separate lawsuits alleging excessive force, was given a higher rank. The state paid for his legal bills, as well as those of all other guard—a portion of the $51m used by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to defend officers from misconduct lawsuits.

Compulsory Labor: A Modern-Day Exploitation System

This state profits economically from continued mass incarceration without supervision. The Alabama Solution describes the alarming extent and double standard of the ADOC’s work initiative, a compulsory-work system that effectively functions as a modern-day mutation of historical bondage. The system provides $450 million in goods and work to the state annually for almost no pay.

In the system, incarcerated workers, mostly African American residents considered unsuitable for society, make two dollars a 24-hour period—the identical daily wage rate established by Alabama for incarcerated labor in 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. They work more than 12 hours for private companies or public sites including the government building, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“Authorities allow me to work in the public, but they refuse me to grant parole to get out and go home to my family.”

These laborers are statistically less likely to be paroled than those who are not, even those considered a higher security risk. “That gives you an understanding of how valuable this free labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to maintain individuals locked up,” said the director.

State-wide Protest and Ongoing Fight

The Alabama Solution culminates in an remarkable feat of organizing: a system-wide prisoners’ work stoppage calling for improved treatment in October 2022, led by Council and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone footage reveals how prison authorities broke the protest in less than two weeks by depriving prisoners en masse, choking the leader, deploying personnel to intimidate and beat participants, and severing contact from strike leaders.

A Country-wide Issue Beyond Alabama

The strike may have failed, but the lesson was clear, and outside the state of Alabama. Council concludes the film with a plea for change: “The things that are taking place in Alabama are happening in every region and in the public's name.”

From the documented violations at New York’s Rikers Island, to California’s use of over a thousand incarcerated emergency responders to the frontlines of the LA fires for below minimum wage, “you see comparable things in most states in the country,” said Jarecki.

“This isn’t only Alabama,” added the co-director. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and language, and a retributive strategy to {everything