Uncovering this Shocking Reality Within the Alabama Correctional Facility Mistreatment
As filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman visited Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a deceptively cheerful atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama's correctional institutions, the prison largely bans journalistic access, but permitted the filmmakers to record its yearly volunteer-run cookout. During camera, imprisoned men, predominantly African American, danced and smiled to live music and religious talks. However off camera, a different narrative surfaced—terrifying beatings, hidden violent attacks, and indescribable violence swept under the rug. Cries for assistance were heard from overheated, dirty housing units. When Jarecki moved toward the sounds, a corrections officer halted recording, stating it was unsafe to interact with the inmates without a security escort.
“It was obvious that there were areas of the facility that we were forbidden to see,” the filmmaker recalled. “They employ the excuse that it’s all about safety and safety, because they don’t want you from comprehending what is occurring. These facilities are like secret locations.”
The Stunning Film Exposing Years of Neglect
This interrupted barbecue event begins The Alabama Solution, a powerful new film produced over half a decade. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour film reveals a shockingly corrupt institution filled with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and extreme brutality. It chronicles inmates' tremendous efforts, under constant danger, to improve conditions declared “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.
Secret Recordings Uncover Horrific Realities
Following their suddenly terminated Easterling tour, the directors connected with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by long-incarcerated organizers Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a network of sources provided multiple years of evidence filmed on illegal mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:
- Rat-infested living spaces
- Heaps of excrement
- Spoiled meals and blood-streaked surfaces
- Routine officer beatings
- Men removed out in body bags
- Corridors of men unresponsive on substances distributed by staff
Council begins the film in half a decade of isolation as retribution for his organizing; subsequently in filming, he is almost killed by officers and suffers sight in an eye.
A Case of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy
This brutality is, we learn, standard within the ADOC. As imprisoned sources persisted to collect evidence, the directors investigated the killing of Steven Davis, who was beaten unrecognizably by officers inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The Alabama Solution traces the victim's parent, Sandy Ray, as she pursues truth from a recalcitrant ADOC. The mother learns the state’s explanation—that her son menaced guards with a knife—on the news. But multiple imprisoned observers informed the family's lawyer that Davis held only a plastic utensil and yielded immediately, only to be assaulted by four officers anyway.
One of them, Roderick Gadson, stomped Davis’s head off the hard surface “like a basketball.”
After three years of evasion, Sandy Ray met with Alabama’s “law-and-order” attorney general Steve Marshall, who informed her that the state would not press criminal counts. Gadson, who faced numerous separate lawsuits alleging excessive force, was given a higher rank. Authorities paid for his defense costs, as well as those of all other officer—a portion of the $51m spent by the state of Alabama in the past five years to defend staff from wrongdoing lawsuits.
Compulsory Labor: A Contemporary Slavery System
The government benefits financially from ongoing imprisonment without supervision. The film details the alarming scope and double standard of the prison system's labor program, a forced-labor system that essentially operates as a modern-day mutation of chattel slavery. This program provides $450m in products and services to the state each year for virtually minimal wages.
Under the program, incarcerated laborers, overwhelmingly Black residents considered unsuitable for society, earn $2 a day—the identical pay scale set by the state for imprisoned workers in the year 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. They work upwards of 12 hours for private companies or government locations including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and local government entities.
“Authorities allow me to work in the community, but they refuse me to give me parole to get out and go home to my loved ones.”
Such workers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are not, even those considered a greater public safety risk. “That gives you an understanding of how important this free labor is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to maintain individuals locked up,” stated Jarecki.
State-wide Protest and Continued Struggle
The documentary concludes in an remarkable achievement of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ strike demanding improved conditions in October 2022, led by Council and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone video shows how prison authorities ended the protest in less than two weeks by depriving inmates collectively, choking Council, deploying soldiers to intimidate and attack participants, and cutting off contact from organizers.
The National Issue Beyond One State
This strike may have failed, but the lesson was evident, and outside the state of the region. Council ends the film with a call to action: “The abuses that are taking place in this state are happening in every state and in your name.”
Starting with the reported violations at New York’s a prison facility, to California’s deployment of over a thousand imprisoned firefighters to the danger zones of the LA fires for less than standard pay, “one observes similar situations in the majority of states in the union,” noted the filmmaker.
“This is not only Alabama,” said Kaufman. “There is a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything
