Uncovering this Disturbing Reality Behind the Alabama Prison System Abuses
When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly pleasant scene. Similar to other Alabama correctional institutions, the prison largely bans media access, but permitted the crew to record its yearly community-organized barbecue. During film, imprisoned men, predominantly Black, celebrated and laughed to musical performances and sermons. However behind the scenes, a different story surfaced—horrific assaults, hidden violent attacks, and indescribable brutality concealed from public view. Cries for assistance came from sweltering, filthy dorms. As soon as the director moved toward the sounds, a corrections officer halted recording, stating it was dangerous to interact with the men without a police escort.
“It was obvious that there were areas of the facility that we were not allowed to view,” Jarecki remembered. “They use the excuse that everything is about safety and security, because they don’t want you from understanding what is occurring. These prisons are similar to secret locations.”
The Stunning Film Uncovering Years of Abuse
That interrupted barbecue event opens The Alabama Solution, a stunning new documentary produced over six years. Co-directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the two-hour production reveals a gallingly corrupt system rife with unchecked abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable cruelty. It chronicles inmates' herculean efforts, under ongoing danger, to improve situations deemed “illegal” by the US justice department in the year 2020.
Secret Recordings Uncover Ghastly Realities
Following their suddenly terminated prison visit, the filmmakers made contact with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by long-incarcerated organizers Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council, a network of sources provided years of evidence recorded on illegal cell phones. The footage is ghastly:
- Rat-infested living spaces
- Heaps of human waste
- Rotting meals and blood-streaked surfaces
- Routine officer beatings
- Men removed out in body bags
- Hallways of men unresponsive on drugs sold by officers
Council begins the documentary in five years of solitary confinement as retribution for his activism; later in filming, he is nearly beaten to death by officers and loses vision in one eye.
The Case of One Inmate: Brutality and Obfuscation
Such brutality is, the film shows, commonplace within the prison system. As incarcerated witnesses persisted to collect proof, the filmmakers investigated the death of Steven Davis, who was assaulted unrecognizably by guards inside the William E Donaldson prison in 2019. The documentary follows the victim's mother, Sandy Ray, as she seeks truth from a recalcitrant ADOC. The mother learns the official version—that Davis menaced officers with a knife—on the news. But several incarcerated witnesses informed the family's lawyer that Davis held only a toy knife and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by four guards regardless.
One of them, an officer, stomped Davis’s skull off the concrete floor “like a basketball.”
Following years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray spoke with Alabama’s “tough on crime” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who told her that the state would not press criminal counts. The officer, who faced more than 20 individual legal actions claiming brutality, was given a higher rank. The state covered for his legal bills, as well as those of every guard—a portion of the $51m used by the government in the last half-decade to protect staff from wrongdoing claims.
Forced Labor: A Contemporary Slavery Scheme
This government profits economically from continued mass incarceration without oversight. The film details the shocking scope and double standard of the prison system's work initiative, a forced-labor system that effectively functions as a present-day version of chattel slavery. This program supplies $450 million in products and work to the state annually for almost no pay.
In the system, incarcerated laborers, mostly African American Alabamians considered unfit for society, make $2 a day—the identical pay scale set by the state for imprisoned workers in 1927, at the height of racial segregation. These individuals work more than half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the government building, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and local government entities.
“They trust me to labor in the community, but they refuse me to give me release to leave and return to my family.”
Such laborers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are not, even those deemed a greater public safety risk. “That gives you an understanding of how important this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep people locked up,” stated the director.
Prison-wide Strike and Continued Fight
The Alabama Solution concludes in an remarkable achievement of organizing: a state-wide prisoners’ strike calling for improved conditions in October 2022, led by an activist and his co-organizer. Illegal mobile video reveals how ADOC ended the strike in less than two weeks by depriving inmates en masse, assaulting the leader, sending soldiers to intimidate and beat participants, and cutting off communication from strike leaders.
The National Issue Beyond Alabama
The protest may have failed, but the message was evident, and outside the state of the region. An activist concludes the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are occurring in this state are taking place in your state and in your name.”
From the documented abuses at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to California’s deployment of 1,100 incarcerated firefighters to the frontlines of the LA fires for below minimum wage, “you see comparable situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” noted the filmmaker.
“This isn’t just Alabama,” added Kaufman. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ policy and rhetoric, and a punitive strategy to {everything
