Exposing this Appalling Reality Behind the Alabama Prison System Mistreatment

When filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman visited the Easterling facility in 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly pleasant atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama's correctional institutions, Easterling largely prohibits journalistic entry, but allowed the crew to film its annual volunteer-run barbecue. On camera, incarcerated individuals, mostly African American, celebrated and laughed to live music and sermons. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story emerged—horrific beatings, hidden violent attacks, and indescribable violence concealed from public view. Cries for assistance came from overheated, dirty dorms. As soon as Jarecki moved toward the sounds, a prison official stopped filming, claiming it was unsafe to speak with the men without a security chaperone.

“It became apparent that certain sections of the facility that we were forbidden to view,” the filmmaker remembered. “They use the idea that everything is about security and safety, since they don’t want you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are like black sites.”

The Revealing Documentary Uncovering Decades of Neglect

That thwarted barbecue event opens the documentary, a stunning new film made over six years. Co-directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the feature-length film exposes a shockingly broken institution filled with unregulated abuse, compulsory work, and extreme brutality. The film chronicles inmates' tremendous struggles, under ongoing physical threat, to improve conditions deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Secret Recordings Uncover Ghastly Realities

Following their suddenly terminated Easterling visit, the filmmakers connected with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by long-incarcerated organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a network of sources provided years of evidence filmed on contraband cell phones. These recordings is disturbing:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Heaps of excrement
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked floors
• Regular guard violence
• Inmates removed out in body bags
• Hallways of men unresponsive on drugs distributed by staff

Council begins the documentary in half a decade of solitary confinement as punishment for his organizing; subsequently in production, he is almost killed by guards and suffers vision in one eye.

A Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Obfuscation

Such violence is, we learn, commonplace within the prison system. While incarcerated witnesses continued to gather proof, the filmmakers investigated the killing of Steven Davis, who was assaulted unrecognizably by officers inside the William E Donaldson prison in 2019. The documentary follows the victim's mother, a family member, as she pursues answers from a uncooperative prison authority. She learns the official version—that Davis threatened guards with a weapon—on the news. But several incarcerated observers told Ray’s attorney that the inmate held only a toy knife and surrendered immediately, only to be assaulted by four guards anyway.

One of them, an officer, smashed the inmate's head off the concrete floor “repeatedly.”

Following three years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray spoke with the state's “law-and-order” attorney general a state official, who told her that the state would decline to file charges. The officer, who had numerous separate legal actions claiming brutality, was promoted. Authorities covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every guard—part of the $51 million spent by the state of Alabama in the past five years to defend staff from misconduct claims.

Compulsory Labor: A Modern-Day Slavery System

The state benefits economically from continued imprisonment without supervision. The Alabama Solution describes the alarming scope and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work system that essentially functions as a present-day version of historical bondage. The system provides $450m in goods and services to the state annually for almost no pay.

Under the program, imprisoned workers, overwhelmingly Black residents considered unfit for society, earn two dollars a day—the identical daily wage rate set by Alabama for imprisoned labor in the year 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. These individuals labor more than half a day 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 community, but they refuse me to grant parole to get out and return to my loved ones.”

These laborers are numerically less likely to be paroled than those who are not, even those deemed a greater security risk. “That gives you an understanding of how important this free labor is to the state, and how important it is for them to maintain people locked up,” said Jarecki.

Prison-wide Strike and Ongoing Fight

The Alabama Solution culminates in an incredible feat of activism: a state-wide prisoners’ strike demanding better conditions in October 2022, organized by Council and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone video shows how ADOC ended the protest in less than two weeks by starving inmates collectively, choking the leader, deploying personnel to intimidate and attack others, and cutting off communication from strike leaders.

The National Issue Outside Alabama

The protest may have failed, but the message was clear, and outside the state of Alabama. Council ends the documentary with a call to action: “The abuses that are occurring in Alabama are happening in every region and in your behalf.”

From the documented violations at New York’s a prison facility, to California’s deployment of 1,100 incarcerated emergency responders to the frontlines of the LA fires for less than standard pay, “you see comparable situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” noted Jarecki.

“This is not only Alabama,” said Kaufman. “There is a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ policy and language, and a retributive approach to {everything