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As filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they encountered a deceptively cheerful scene. Like other Alabama's correctional institutions, Easterling largely prohibits journalistic entry, but permitted the crew to film its yearly community-organized cookout. During camera, imprisoned men, predominantly Black, danced and smiled to musical performances and religious talks. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story emerged—terrifying assaults, unreported stabbings, and unimaginable violence swept under the rug. Pleas for help were heard from overheated, dirty dorms. As soon as the director moved toward the sounds, a corrections officer stopped filming, claiming it was dangerous to speak with the inmates without a police chaperone.

“It was very clear that certain sections of the prison that we were forbidden to view,” the filmmaker recalled. “They employ the excuse that it’s all about safety and safety, because they aim to prevent you from comprehending what they’re doing. These facilities are like secret locations.”

The Revealing Film Exposing Years of Neglect

That interrupted cookout meeting opens the documentary, a powerful new film made over half a decade. Co-directed by the director and Kaufman, the feature-length production reveals a shockingly broken system filled with unregulated abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable brutality. It chronicles inmates' tremendous efforts, under constant danger, to change conditions deemed “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Covert Footage Reveal Horrific Conditions

Following their suddenly terminated prison tour, the filmmakers made contact with men inside the state prison system. Guided by long-incarcerated activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a group of sources supplied multiple years of footage filmed on illegal mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Piles of human waste
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked surfaces
• Regular officer beatings
• Men carried out in body bags
• Hallways of individuals near-catatonic on substances distributed by staff

One activist starts the film in five years of solitary confinement as retribution for his organizing; subsequently in production, he is almost killed by officers and loses sight in an eye.

The Case of Steven Davis: Violence and Obfuscation

This violence is, the film shows, standard within the prison system. As imprisoned witnesses persisted to collect evidence, the filmmakers investigated the death of an inmate, who was beaten beyond recognition by guards inside the Donaldson prison in October 2019. The documentary follows Davis’s parent, a family member, as she pursues answers from a uncooperative ADOC. The mother learns the official explanation—that her son menaced officers with a weapon—on the television. However several imprisoned witnesses informed Ray’s lawyer that Davis wielded only a plastic knife and yielded immediately, only to be beaten by multiple officers regardless.

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

Following years of evasion, the mother met with Alabama’s “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who told her that the state would decline to file charges. The officer, who had numerous individual lawsuits claiming brutality, was given a higher rank. Authorities covered for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—a portion of the $51 million spent by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to protect staff from wrongdoing claims.

Compulsory Labor: The Contemporary Slavery System

This government benefits economically from ongoing imprisonment without oversight. The Alabama Solution describes the shocking scope and hypocrisy of the prison system's labor program, a compulsory-work arrangement that effectively functions as a present-day version of historical bondage. This program provides $450 million in products and work to the government annually for virtually minimal wages.

Under the system, imprisoned laborers, overwhelmingly Black Alabamians deemed unfit for the community, earn $2 a day—the identical pay scale established by the state for incarcerated workers in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. They labor upwards of half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

“They trust me to labor in the community, but they don’t trust me to grant release to leave and return to my family.”

These workers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those deemed a greater security threat. “That gives you an understanding of how valuable this free workforce is to the state, and how critical it is for them to maintain individuals imprisoned,” stated Jarecki.

State-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The documentary culminates in an incredible achievement of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ strike demanding improved conditions in 2022, led by an activist and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone footage reveals how ADOC ended the strike in less than two weeks by starving prisoners en masse, assaulting the leader, deploying personnel to threaten and attack participants, and cutting off contact from strike leaders.

A Country-wide Problem Outside One State

This protest may have ended, but the message was clear, and beyond the state of Alabama. An activist concludes the film with a plea for change: “The things that are occurring in Alabama are happening in every region and in the public's behalf.”

From the documented abuses at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to the state of California's use of over a thousand imprisoned firefighters to the frontlines of the LA wildfires for below standard pay, “one observes comparable things in the majority of jurisdictions in the union,” noted Jarecki.

“This isn’t only Alabama,” added Kaufman. “There is a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ policy and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything