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As documentarians the directors and Charlotte Kaufman entered Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a deceptively cheerful scene. Similar to other Alabama prisons, Easterling largely prohibits media access, but permitted the filmmakers to record its yearly volunteer-run cookout. On camera, imprisoned individuals, mostly Black, celebrated and smiled to live music and sermons. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story emerged—horrific beatings, hidden violent attacks, and indescribable violence concealed from public view. Pleas for help came from sweltering, dirty housing units. When Jarecki moved toward the sounds, a corrections officer halted filming, claiming it was unsafe to interact with the inmates without a police chaperone.

“It was obvious that there were areas of the prison that we were forbidden to view,” the filmmaker remembered. “They use the idea that everything is about safety and security, since they don’t want you from understanding what they’re doing. These facilities are similar to secret locations.”

A Revealing Film Uncovering Years of Neglect

That thwarted cookout meeting opens the documentary, a powerful new film produced over half a decade. Co-directed by Jarecki and his partner, the feature-length production exposes a shockingly broken institution rife with unregulated mistreatment, forced labor, and extreme cruelty. The film documents inmates' tremendous struggles, under constant physical threat, to change situations declared “illegal” by the US justice department in the year 2020.

Covert Footage Reveal Ghastly Realities

Following their abruptly ended prison tour, the filmmakers connected with individuals inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran activists Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council, a group of sources provided multiple years of footage recorded on contraband mobile devices. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested living spaces
• Heaps of human waste
• Rotting meals and blood-streaked floors
• Regular guard beatings
• Inmates carried out in remains pouches
• Corridors of individuals unresponsive on substances distributed by officers

Council begins the documentary in half a decade of solitary confinement as retribution for his activism; subsequently in production, he is nearly killed by officers and loses vision in one eye.

The Story of Steven Davis: Brutality and Obfuscation

This brutality is, we learn, standard within the prison system. As imprisoned witnesses persisted to gather proof, the filmmakers looked into the death of Steven Davis, who was beaten unrecognizably by guards inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The documentary follows Davis’s mother, a family member, as she pursues truth from a uncooperative ADOC. The mother discovers the state’s version—that Davis threatened officers with a weapon—on the news. But several incarcerated witnesses informed the family's lawyer that Davis wielded only a toy knife and surrendered immediately, only to be beaten by multiple guards regardless.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, stomped the inmate's head off the concrete floor “repeatedly.”

After years of evasion, the mother met with Alabama’s “tough on crime” top lawyer a state official, who told her that the authorities would not press criminal counts. The officer, who had numerous separate legal actions claiming brutality, was given a higher rank. The state paid for his defense costs, as well as those of every officer—a portion of the $51 million used by the government in the past five years to defend staff from misconduct claims.

Compulsory Work: A Contemporary Slavery System

This government benefits economically from continued mass incarceration without oversight. The Alabama Solution details the alarming scope and hypocrisy of the ADOC’s work initiative, a forced-labor arrangement that effectively functions as a present-day version of historical bondage. This program supplies $450m in products and work to the government each year for virtually no pay.

Under the system, imprisoned workers, mostly African American Alabamians deemed unfit for society, earn $2 a day—the same daily wage rate established by Alabama for incarcerated workers in the year 1927, at the height of racial segregation. These individuals work more than 12 hours for private companies or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the Alabama supreme court, and municipal offices.

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

These laborers are statistically less likely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those considered a greater security threat. “This illustrates you an understanding of how important this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to maintain individuals imprisoned,” said Jarecki.

State-wide Strike and Ongoing Struggle

The documentary culminates in an incredible feat of organizing: a system-wide inmates' strike demanding improved treatment in 2022, organized by Council and Melvin Ray. Contraband cell phone footage shows how prison authorities ended the protest in 11 days by starving inmates en masse, choking the leader, sending soldiers to intimidate and attack participants, and cutting off communication from organizers.

The National Problem Beyond Alabama

The strike may have failed, but the lesson was clear, and beyond the borders of the region. Council concludes the film with a call to action: “The things that are taking place in Alabama are happening in your region and in your name.”

From the reported violations at New York’s a prison facility, to the state of California's use of over a thousand imprisoned firefighters to the frontlines of the LA fires for less than standard pay, “you see comparable situations in the majority of states in the country,” noted the filmmaker.

“This is not only one state,” said Kaufman. “We’re witnessing a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ approaches and rhetoric, and a punitive strategy to {everything