Exposing the Disturbing Truth Behind the Alabama Prison System Abuses

When filmmakers the directors and his co-director visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a deceptively pleasant atmosphere. Like other Alabama's correctional institutions, the prison largely bans media entry, but allowed the filmmakers to film its yearly community-organized cookout. On film, imprisoned men, predominantly Black, danced and laughed to musical performances and sermons. But behind the scenes, a different narrative emerged—terrifying beatings, unreported stabbings, and unimaginable brutality concealed from public view. Pleas for assistance were heard from sweltering, filthy dorms. When the director moved toward the sounds, a prison official halted filming, stating it was dangerous to interact with the men without a security escort.

“It was very clear that certain sections of the prison that we were forbidden to view,” Jarecki recalled. “They use the idea that it’s all about safety and security, because they aim to prevent you from understanding what they’re doing. These facilities are similar to black sites.”

The Revealing Documentary Exposing Years of Abuse

This thwarted barbecue event begins The Alabama Solution, a powerful new film produced over six years. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the feature-length film reveals a shockingly corrupt institution rife with unchecked abuse, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. The film documents prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under ongoing danger, to change situations deemed “illegal” by the US justice department in the year 2020.

Secret Recordings Reveal Horrific Conditions

After their suddenly terminated prison visit, the filmmakers made contact with men inside the state prison system. Led by veteran activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a group of sources supplied years of footage filmed on contraband cell phones. These recordings is ghastly:

• Rat-infested cells
• Heaps of human waste
• Spoiled food and blood-streaked surfaces
• Routine officer beatings
• Inmates carried out in body bags
• Hallways of men unresponsive on drugs distributed by staff

One activist starts the documentary in five years of solitary confinement as retribution for his activism; subsequently in production, he is nearly killed by guards and loses sight in one eye.

A Story of One Inmate: Violence and Obfuscation

Such violence is, we learn, commonplace within the ADOC. As incarcerated sources persisted to collect proof, the filmmakers looked into the killing of an inmate, who was beaten beyond recognition by officers inside the Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The documentary traces the victim's parent, a family member, as she seeks truth from a recalcitrant ADOC. She discovers the state’s explanation—that Davis menaced officers with a knife—on the television. But several imprisoned observers informed Ray’s attorney that Davis held only a toy knife and surrendered immediately, only to be beaten by four guards regardless.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, stomped Davis’s head off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

Following years of obfuscation, the mother met with the state's “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who informed her that the state would decline to file charges. Gadson, who had more than 20 individual legal actions claiming brutality, was given a higher rank. Authorities paid for his legal bills, as well as those of all other officer—a portion of the $51 million used by the government in the last half-decade to defend staff from wrongdoing claims.

Compulsory Labor: A Contemporary Exploitation System

The government profits economically from continued mass incarceration without oversight. The film describes the alarming extent and double standard of the ADOC’s labor program, a compulsory-work system that effectively functions as a modern-day mutation of historical bondage. The system provides $450m in products and services to the government annually for almost no pay.

Under the system, imprisoned workers, overwhelmingly Black residents considered unfit for society, earn two dollars a 24-hour period—the identical pay scale set by Alabama for incarcerated labor in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. They work upwards of half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and municipal offices.

“Authorities allow me to labor in the public, but they don’t trust me to give me parole to get out and return to my loved ones.”

Such workers are numerically more unlikely to be released than those who are not, even those deemed a greater security threat. “This illustrates you an understanding of how important this free workforce is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to keep people imprisoned,” said Jarecki.

State-wide Protest and Continued Struggle

The Alabama Solution culminates in an remarkable achievement of organizing: a system-wide prisoners’ work stoppage demanding better conditions in October 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Contraband mobile footage reveals how ADOC broke the protest in less than two weeks by starving prisoners en masse, assaulting Council, deploying soldiers to intimidate and beat others, and cutting off contact from strike leaders.

The National Problem Outside One State

This protest may have failed, but the message was clear, and beyond the state of the region. Council concludes the documentary with a plea for change: “The abuses that are occurring in Alabama are taking place in your state and in your behalf.”

Starting with the reported violations at New York’s Rikers Island, to California’s deployment of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the danger zones of the Los Angeles wildfires for below standard pay, “one observes comparable things in most states in the union,” said the filmmaker.

“This is not just Alabama,” added the co-director. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ policy and rhetoric, and a punitive approach to {everything