Exposing the Disturbing Reality Behind the Alabama Correctional Facility Abuses
When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman entered Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly cheerful scene. Similar to other Alabama's correctional institutions, the prison largely prohibits journalistic access, but allowed the crew to film its yearly community-organized barbecue. On camera, imprisoned men, mostly Black, danced and smiled to musical performances and sermons. However off camera, a contrasting story emerged—terrifying beatings, unreported violent attacks, and indescribable brutality concealed from public view. Pleas for help came from sweltering, dirty dorms. When the director approached the voices, a corrections officer halted filming, claiming it was dangerous to speak with the men without a security escort.
“It became apparent that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” the filmmaker remembered. “They employ the idea that everything is about safety and safety, since they don’t want you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are like black sites.”
The Stunning Documentary Exposing Years of Neglect
That interrupted barbecue event begins The Alabama Solution, a stunning new film made over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by the director and his partner, the feature-length film exposes a gallingly corrupt institution filled with unchecked abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable cruelty. The film documents prisoners’ tremendous struggles, under constant danger, to change situations deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.
Secret Recordings Uncover Horrific Realities
Following their suddenly terminated prison visit, the directors connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by veteran activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a group of sources provided years of evidence recorded on illegal cell phones. These recordings is disturbing:
- Vermin-ridden cells
- Piles of human waste
- Rotting meals and blood-streaked floors
- Regular guard violence
- Inmates carried out in body bags
- Corridors of men near-catatonic on drugs sold by staff
Council starts the documentary in five years of isolation as punishment for his organizing; later in filming, he is almost killed by guards and loses vision in an eye.
The Case of One Inmate: Violence and Obfuscation
Such brutality is, the film shows, standard within the ADOC. As imprisoned sources continued to gather proof, the filmmakers investigated the death of Steven Davis, who was beaten unrecognizably by guards inside the William E Donaldson prison in 2019. The Alabama Solution traces the victim's mother, a family member, as she seeks truth from a uncooperative ADOC. The mother learns the official version—that Davis menaced guards with a weapon—on the television. However multiple imprisoned witnesses informed the family's lawyer that Davis held only a plastic knife and yielded at once, only to be assaulted by four officers anyway.
A guard, Roderick Gadson, stomped the inmate's head off the concrete floor “repeatedly.”
After years of evasion, the mother met with the state's “tough on crime” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who told her that the authorities would decline to file charges. Gadson, who had numerous individual legal actions alleging excessive force, was given a higher rank. The state covered for his legal bills, as well as those of all other officer—part of the $51m spent by the state of Alabama in the past five years to protect staff from misconduct lawsuits.
Compulsory Work: The Contemporary Slavery Scheme
This government benefits economically from ongoing imprisonment without oversight. The film details the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a forced-labor arrangement that effectively functions as a present-day version of chattel slavery. This program supplies $450m in products and services to the government each year for almost no pay.
In the program, imprisoned laborers, overwhelmingly Black residents considered unfit for the community, earn $2 a 24-hour period—the same daily wage rate set by Alabama for incarcerated labor in 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. They work more than half a day for corporate entities or public sites including the government building, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and local government entities.
“They trust me to work in the community, but they refuse me to grant release to leave and go home to my family.”
Such laborers are numerically less likely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those considered a higher public safety risk. “This illustrates you an idea of how important this free workforce is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to keep individuals locked up,” said the director.
Prison-wide Protest and Continued Struggle
The documentary concludes in an remarkable achievement of activism: a state-wide inmates' work stoppage demanding improved treatment in October 2022, organized by an activist and his co-organizer. Contraband mobile footage shows how prison authorities broke the strike in 11 days by starving prisoners collectively, assaulting Council, deploying personnel to threaten and attack others, and severing communication from strike leaders.
A National Problem Beyond Alabama
The protest may have failed, but the lesson was evident, and outside the state of the region. Council ends the documentary with a call to action: “The things that are occurring in this state are taking place in every state and in the public's name.”
Starting with the documented violations at the state of New York's a prison facility, to California’s deployment of over a thousand imprisoned firefighters to the danger zones of the Los Angeles wildfires for less than standard pay, “you see similar things in most jurisdictions in the country,” said Jarecki.
“This is not just Alabama,” said Kaufman. “There is a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ policy and language, and a punitive approach to {everything
