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As filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and his co-director entered the Easterling facility in 2019, they encountered a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama correctional institutions, Easterling largely prohibits journalistic access, but allowed the crew to record its yearly volunteer-run barbecue. During film, incarcerated men, mostly African American, celebrated and smiled to musical performances and sermons. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story surfaced—terrifying assaults, hidden violent attacks, and unimaginable violence swept under the rug. Cries for assistance came from sweltering, filthy housing units. As soon as Jarecki approached the sounds, a corrections officer halted filming, claiming it was unsafe to speak with the men without a police chaperone.

“It was very clear that there were areas of the facility that we were not allowed to view,” Jarecki recalled. “They employ the idea that it’s all about security and safety, since they don’t want you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are similar to secret locations.”

A Stunning Documentary Exposing Decades of Neglect

This interrupted barbecue meeting opens the documentary, a powerful new film produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and his partner, the two-hour production reveals a shockingly corrupt institution rife with unchecked abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable brutality. It chronicles prisoners’ herculean efforts, under ongoing danger, to change situations declared “illegal” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Covert Footage Reveal Horrific Conditions

Following their abruptly terminated prison visit, the filmmakers made contact with men inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a group of sources supplied multiple years of evidence recorded on contraband mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Piles of human waste
• Rotting meals and blood-streaked surfaces
• Regular officer beatings
• Men carried out in remains pouches
• Hallways of individuals unresponsive on substances distributed by staff

One activist starts the documentary in half a decade of isolation as punishment for his organizing; subsequently in production, he is almost killed by officers and suffers sight in one eye.

The Case of One Inmate: Brutality and Secrecy

Such brutality is, we learn, commonplace within the prison system. While imprisoned witnesses persisted to gather evidence, the filmmakers looked into the death of Steven Davis, who was assaulted beyond recognition by guards inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The Alabama Solution traces Davis’s mother, a family member, as she seeks answers from a recalcitrant ADOC. She learns the official explanation—that her son menaced guards with a weapon—on the television. But multiple imprisoned witnesses informed the family's attorney that Davis held only a plastic utensil and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by multiple officers anyway.

One of them, an officer, stomped Davis’s head off the hard surface “like a basketball.”

After three years of evasion, the mother spoke with the state's “tough on crime” top lawyer Steve Marshall, who informed her that the state would not press criminal counts. Gadson, who had numerous individual legal actions claiming excessive force, was promoted. Authorities paid for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—part of the $51m used by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to protect staff from misconduct claims.

Forced Labor: The Contemporary Exploitation Scheme

The government benefits financially from continued mass incarceration without supervision. The film describes the alarming scope and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a forced-labor system that essentially operates as a modern-day version of historical bondage. This program provides $450 million in products and services to the state each year for almost no pay.

In the system, incarcerated laborers, overwhelmingly African American residents considered unsuitable for the community, earn two dollars a day—the identical pay scale established by the state for incarcerated labor in 1927, at the height of racial segregation. These individuals work upwards of half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the government building, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.

“Authorities allow me to work in the community, but they don’t trust me to grant release to get out and return to my family.”

Such laborers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are not, even those considered a greater public safety risk. “This illustrates you an idea of how important this free labor is to the state, and how critical it is for them to maintain people locked up,” said the director.

Prison-wide Protest and Ongoing Fight

The Alabama Solution concludes in an remarkable feat of activism: a state-wide inmates' work stoppage demanding improved conditions in October 2022, organized by Council and his co-organizer. Contraband mobile video shows how prison authorities ended the strike in less than two weeks by starving prisoners en masse, assaulting Council, deploying personnel to threaten and beat participants, and severing contact from strike leaders.

A National Issue Beyond Alabama

This protest may have ended, but the message was clear, and outside the state of Alabama. Council ends the documentary with a plea for change: “The abuses that are taking place in this state are taking place in every state and in the public's behalf.”

From the documented abuses at the state of New York's a prison facility, to the state of California's use of 1,100 incarcerated emergency responders to the frontlines of the LA fires for below minimum wage, “one observes similar situations in most jurisdictions in the union,” said Jarecki.

“This isn’t just Alabama,” said the co-director. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive strategy to {everything