Exposing the Appalling Reality Within the Alabama Prison Facility Abuses

When documentarians the directors and Charlotte Kaufman entered Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly pleasant atmosphere. Like other Alabama's correctional institutions, the prison largely prohibits media access, but permitted the crew to record its yearly volunteer-run barbecue. On film, imprisoned men, mostly African American, danced and smiled to live music and religious talks. However behind the scenes, a contrasting story surfaced—horrific assaults, hidden violent attacks, and unimaginable brutality concealed from public view. Pleas for help were heard from sweltering, dirty housing units. As soon as Jarecki approached the sounds, a prison official stopped filming, claiming it was unsafe to speak with the men without a security chaperone.

“It was obvious that there were areas of the prison that we were forbidden to see,” the filmmaker recalled. “They employ the idea that everything is about safety and security, since they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are similar to secret locations.”

The Stunning Documentary Exposing Decades of Neglect

This thwarted cookout event begins the documentary, a stunning new film produced over six years. Co-directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the two-hour film reveals a gallingly broken system rife with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. The film chronicles prisoners’ tremendous struggles, under ongoing physical threat, to improve situations declared “illegal” by the US justice department in 2020.

Secret Footage Uncover Ghastly Realities

Following their abruptly terminated prison visit, the filmmakers connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by veteran organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a network of sources supplied years of evidence filmed on illegal cell phones. These recordings is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Piles of human waste
• Rotting meals and blood-stained floors
• Routine guard beatings
• Inmates removed out in body bags
• Hallways of individuals unresponsive on drugs sold by staff

One activist starts the film in half a decade of isolation as retribution for his organizing; subsequently in filming, he is almost beaten to death by guards and loses sight in one eye.

A Story of One Inmate: Brutality and Secrecy

This violence is, we learn, commonplace within the prison system. While incarcerated sources persisted to gather evidence, the directors investigated the death of an inmate, who was beaten unrecognizably by officers inside the Donaldson prison in 2019. The Alabama Solution traces the victim's parent, a family member, as she pursues answers from a recalcitrant ADOC. The mother discovers the state’s explanation—that her son threatened guards with a knife—on the television. But multiple imprisoned observers told Ray’s attorney that Davis wielded only a toy knife and yielded immediately, only to be beaten by four officers anyway.

A guard, Roderick Gadson, stomped the inmate's head off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

After three years of obfuscation, the mother spoke with Alabama’s “law-and-order” attorney general Steve Marshall, who informed her that the authorities would not press charges. Gadson, who had numerous individual legal actions claiming brutality, was promoted. Authorities paid for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—part of the $51m used by the government in the past five years to defend staff from misconduct lawsuits.

Compulsory Work: The Contemporary Exploitation Scheme

This state benefits financially from continued mass incarceration without supervision. The film describes the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s work initiative, a forced-labor arrangement that essentially functions as a modern-day mutation of historical bondage. The system supplies $450m in products and work to the government annually for virtually no pay.

Under the system, incarcerated workers, overwhelmingly Black residents considered unsuitable for the community, earn $2 a day—the identical daily wage rate set by the state for imprisoned workers in the year 1927, at the height of racial segregation. These individuals work more than 12 hours for private companies or public sites including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

“They trust me to work in the public, but they don’t trust me to give me parole to get out and go home to my loved ones.”

Such laborers are statistically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those considered a greater public safety threat. “This illustrates you an idea of how valuable this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to maintain people imprisoned,” said Jarecki.

Prison-wide Protest and Continued Fight

The documentary concludes in an remarkable achievement of organizing: a state-wide inmates' work stoppage calling for improved treatment in 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Illegal cell phone footage shows how prison authorities ended the strike in 11 days by starving inmates en masse, choking Council, deploying personnel to threaten and attack participants, and cutting off contact from strike leaders.

A National Issue Beyond One State

This strike may have ended, but the message was clear, and outside the state of the region. An activist concludes the film with a call to action: “The abuses that are taking place in Alabama are taking place in every state and in the public's name.”

Starting with the documented abuses at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to California’s deployment of over a thousand imprisoned emergency responders to the danger zones of the LA fires for below minimum wage, “one observes similar things in most states in the country,” noted Jarecki.

“This is not only Alabama,” added Kaufman. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ policy and language, and a retributive strategy to {everything