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When documentarians the directors and his co-director entered Easterling prison in the year 2019, they encountered a misleadingly pleasant atmosphere. Similar to other Alabama's prisons, Easterling largely bans media access, but permitted the crew to film its yearly community-organized cookout. On film, incarcerated men, predominantly Black, danced and laughed to musical performances and religious talks. But behind the scenes, a different story surfaced—terrifying assaults, hidden stabbings, and indescribable violence concealed from public view. Cries for assistance were heard from sweltering, dirty dorms. As soon as Jarecki moved toward the voices, a prison official stopped filming, stating it was dangerous to interact with the inmates without a security escort.

“It became apparent that certain sections of the prison that we were not allowed to view,” the filmmaker recalled. “They use the excuse that everything is about security and safety, because they aim to prevent you from understanding what is occurring. These facilities are like secret locations.”

A Stunning Film Uncovering Decades of Abuse

That interrupted barbecue event begins the documentary, a stunning new documentary produced over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and Kaufman, the feature-length film reveals a gallingly corrupt system filled with unchecked abuse, forced labor, and extreme cruelty. The film chronicles prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under constant danger, to improve situations deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Covert Recordings Reveal Ghastly Realities

Following their suddenly ended Easterling tour, the directors made contact with individuals inside the state prison system. Guided by long-incarcerated organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a group of insiders supplied multiple years of evidence recorded on illegal cell phones. The footage is disturbing:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Heaps of human waste
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked floors
• Regular guard beatings
• Men removed out in remains pouches
• Hallways of men near-catatonic on drugs sold by officers

One activist begins the documentary in half a decade of solitary confinement as retribution for his organizing; subsequently in filming, he is almost beaten to death by guards and loses sight in an eye.

A Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy

Such brutality is, we learn, standard within the ADOC. As imprisoned sources continued to gather evidence, the directors investigated the death of Steven Davis, who was beaten beyond recognition by officers inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The documentary follows the victim's parent, Sandy Ray, as she seeks answers from a uncooperative ADOC. The mother learns the state’s version—that Davis menaced officers with a weapon—on the television. However multiple incarcerated observers told Ray’s attorney that the inmate held only a plastic knife and yielded immediately, only to be beaten by multiple officers anyway.

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

Following years of evasion, Sandy Ray 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 more than 20 individual lawsuits alleging excessive force, was given a higher rank. Authorities paid for his legal bills, as well as those of every guard—part of the $51m used by the state of Alabama in the past five years to defend staff from misconduct claims.

Compulsory Labor: The Contemporary Slavery Scheme

The government benefits economically from continued imprisonment without supervision. The Alabama Solution describes the shocking scope and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s labor program, a forced-labor system that essentially operates as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. The system supplies $450m in goods and services to the government each year for almost no pay.

In the program, imprisoned laborers, overwhelmingly Black Alabamians deemed unfit for society, earn $2 a day—the same pay scale established by Alabama for imprisoned workers in 1927, at the height of racial segregation. These individuals labor more than half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

“Authorities allow 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.”

These laborers are numerically less likely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those considered a greater public safety threat. “This illustrates you an understanding of how valuable this free labor is to the state, and how critical it is for them to keep individuals imprisoned,” said the director.

State-wide Protest and Ongoing Struggle

The documentary concludes in an remarkable feat of activism: a state-wide prisoners’ work stoppage demanding improved conditions in 2022, led by an activist and Melvin Ray. Illegal mobile video shows how prison authorities broke the strike in 11 days by depriving inmates en masse, assaulting the leader, sending soldiers to threaten and beat participants, and severing contact from organizers.

A Country-wide Issue Outside Alabama

The strike may have failed, but the lesson was evident, and outside the borders of the region. An activist concludes the documentary with a plea for change: “The things that are taking place in Alabama are happening in every state and in your behalf.”

Starting with the documented violations at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to the state of California's deployment of 1,100 imprisoned emergency responders to the frontlines of the Los Angeles wildfires for below standard pay, “you see comparable situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the country,” noted Jarecki.

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