Exposing the Disturbing Reality Within Alabama's Prison Facility Abuses

As filmmakers the directors and his co-director visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a deceptively pleasant atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama's prisons, Easterling mostly bans media entry, but permitted the filmmakers to record its yearly volunteer-run cookout. During film, incarcerated individuals, mostly Black, danced and smiled to musical performances and sermons. But off camera, a contrasting story emerged—terrifying assaults, unreported violent attacks, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for help were heard from overheated, dirty dorms. As soon as the director approached the sounds, a prison official halted recording, stating it was dangerous to interact with the inmates without a security chaperone.

“It was obvious that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to view,” Jarecki recalled. “They employ the excuse that it’s all about safety and security, since they don’t want you from understanding what they’re doing. These facilities are like black sites.”

The Stunning Film Exposing Years of Neglect

That thwarted barbecue meeting opens the documentary, a stunning new film made over six years. Co-directed by the director and Kaufman, the feature-length film exposes a shockingly corrupt system filled with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. It documents prisoners’ herculean struggles, under constant danger, to change situations declared “illegal” by the US justice department in 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Ghastly Realities

After their suddenly ended prison tour, the filmmakers made contact with individuals inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran organizers Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council, a network of insiders provided years of evidence recorded on contraband cell phones. The footage is disturbing:

• Rat-infested cells
• Heaps of excrement
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked floors
• Routine guard beatings
• Inmates carried out in body bags
• Corridors of individuals near-catatonic on substances distributed by staff

One activist starts the film in half a decade of isolation as retribution for his organizing; later in production, he is nearly killed by officers and loses vision in an eye.

The Case of One Inmate: Violence and Obfuscation

Such brutality is, we learn, commonplace within the prison system. While imprisoned sources persisted to collect proof, the directors looked into the death of Steven Davis, who was assaulted unrecognizably by officers inside the William E Donaldson prison in October 2019. The documentary traces the victim's mother, a family member, as she pursues truth from a uncooperative prison authority. The mother learns the state’s explanation—that Davis menaced officers with a weapon—on the news. But multiple imprisoned observers informed Ray’s attorney that the inmate held only a toy knife and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by four officers anyway.

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

Following years of evasion, the mother met with the state's “tough on crime” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who informed her that the authorities would decline to file criminal counts. The officer, who faced numerous separate legal actions claiming brutality, was promoted. The state paid for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—a portion of the $51 million used by the government in the last half-decade to defend staff from misconduct lawsuits.

Forced Labor: A Contemporary Slavery Scheme

This government profits financially from continued imprisonment without oversight. The film describes the shocking extent and double standard of the ADOC’s work initiative, a forced-labor system that essentially functions as a modern-day mutation of chattel slavery. This program provides $450m in goods and services to the government each year for almost no pay.

In the program, incarcerated laborers, overwhelmingly Black residents deemed unsuitable for society, earn $2 a day—the identical pay scale established by the state for imprisoned labor in the year 1927, at the height of racial segregation. These individuals work upwards of half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“Authorities allow me to labor in the community, but they don’t trust me to give me release to leave and go home to my family.”

Such laborers are statistically less likely to be released than those who are not, even those considered a higher security risk. “This illustrates you an idea of how important this low-cost workforce is to the state, and how critical it is for them to keep people imprisoned,” said the director.

State-wide Strike and Ongoing Struggle

The Alabama Solution concludes in an incredible feat of activism: a state-wide inmates' work stoppage demanding better treatment in 2022, organized by an activist and Melvin Ray. Illegal mobile footage shows how ADOC broke the protest in 11 days by starving prisoners collectively, choking Council, sending soldiers to intimidate and beat others, and cutting off communication from strike leaders.

The Country-wide Problem Beyond One State

The protest may have ended, but the message was clear, and beyond the borders of Alabama. An activist concludes the film with a call to action: “The abuses that are taking place in Alabama are taking place in your state and in your name.”

Starting with the reported violations at the state of New York's a prison facility, to California’s use of 1,100 incarcerated emergency responders to the danger zones of the LA wildfires for less than minimum wage, “you see similar things in the majority of jurisdictions in the country,” noted the filmmaker.

“This is not only Alabama,” added Kaufman. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ policy and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything