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As documentarians the directors and his co-director entered Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful atmosphere. Similar to the state's Alabama prisons, Easterling mostly bans media access, but permitted the filmmakers to record its annual volunteer-run barbecue. On camera, imprisoned men, mostly African American, danced and smiled to live music and sermons. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story emerged—terrifying beatings, hidden violent attacks, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Pleas for help were heard from overheated, filthy housing units. When Jarecki approached the voices, a corrections officer stopped recording, stating it was dangerous to interact with the men without a security escort.

“It was very clear that certain sections of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki remembered. “They use the idea that everything is about security and security, because they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are similar to secret locations.”

A Revealing Film Uncovering Years of Abuse

This thwarted cookout event opens the documentary, a powerful new film produced over six years. Co-directed by the director and Kaufman, the feature-length film exposes a shockingly broken system rife with unchecked abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable cruelty. The film documents inmates' tremendous struggles, under ongoing physical threat, to change situations deemed “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Secret Recordings Reveal Horrific Conditions

Following their suddenly ended Easterling tour, the filmmakers connected with individuals inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran activists Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a group of sources provided multiple years of footage recorded on contraband mobile devices. These recordings is disturbing:

• Rat-infested cells
• Heaps of excrement
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked surfaces
• Regular guard violence
• Men carried out in body bags
• Corridors of men near-catatonic on substances sold by staff

One activist begins the documentary in five years of isolation as retribution for his activism; subsequently in production, he is nearly killed by guards and loses sight in one eye.

A Case of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy

This brutality is, the film shows, commonplace within the prison system. As imprisoned sources continued to gather proof, the directors investigated the death of an inmate, who was beaten unrecognizably by guards inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The Alabama Solution traces Davis’s mother, Sandy Ray, as she pursues truth from a uncooperative ADOC. She discovers the official explanation—that her son menaced guards with a weapon—on the news. However several imprisoned observers told Ray’s lawyer that the inmate held only a toy knife and surrendered at once, only to be assaulted by multiple officers regardless.

One of them, an officer, smashed Davis’s skull off the concrete floor “like a basketball.”

After years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray met with the state's “tough on crime” top lawyer a state official, who told her that the authorities would not press charges. Gadson, who faced more than 20 separate lawsuits alleging brutality, was promoted. The state 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 protect officers from wrongdoing claims.

Compulsory Work: A Modern-Day Slavery Scheme

The government profits economically from continued mass incarceration without oversight. The film describes the alarming extent and hypocrisy of the prison system's labor program, a forced-labor arrangement that essentially operates as a present-day version of chattel slavery. The system supplies $450 million in goods and work to the government annually for virtually no pay.

In the program, incarcerated laborers, overwhelmingly Black Alabamians considered unsuitable for society, earn $2 a day—the identical daily wage rate set by the state for imprisoned workers in the year 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. They work more than half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the government building, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and local government entities.

“They trust me to work in the community, but they refuse me to give me parole to leave and return to my loved ones.”

Such workers are numerically less likely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those considered a higher public safety threat. “That gives you an idea of how valuable this low-cost labor is to the state, and how important it is for them to keep people imprisoned,” stated Jarecki.

State-wide Strike and Ongoing Fight

The documentary culminates in an incredible achievement of activism: a system-wide prisoners’ work stoppage demanding improved treatment in 2022, organized by an activist and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone video shows how ADOC broke the strike in less than two weeks by depriving inmates collectively, assaulting Council, sending personnel to intimidate and attack participants, and severing contact from strike leaders.

A Country-wide Issue Outside One State

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

Starting with the documented abuses at New York’s a prison facility, to the state of California's deployment of 1,100 incarcerated firefighters to the danger zones of the LA wildfires for below standard pay, “you see similar things in most jurisdictions in the union,” noted Jarecki.

“This isn’t only one state,” said the co-director. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and rhetoric, and a punitive approach to {everything