Revealing the Shocking Truth Behind the Alabama Correctional Facility Mistreatment
When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director entered the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly pleasant scene. Like the state's Alabama prisons, the prison mostly prohibits journalistic entry, but allowed the crew to record its annual volunteer-run cookout. On camera, incarcerated men, mostly Black, danced and laughed to live music and sermons. But behind the scenes, a contrasting story emerged—horrific assaults, unreported violent attacks, and unimaginable violence swept under the rug. Cries for help came from overheated, filthy dorms. As soon as Jarecki moved toward the voices, a prison official stopped filming, stating it was dangerous to speak with the men without a security escort.
“It was very clear that certain sections of the facility that we were not allowed to view,” Jarecki remembered. “They use the excuse that it’s all about security and safety, because they don’t want you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are similar to secret locations.”
The Revealing Film Uncovering Years of Abuse
This interrupted cookout event opens the documentary, a stunning new documentary made over half a decade. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and his partner, the two-hour production exposes a gallingly corrupt system filled with unchecked mistreatment, forced labor, and unimaginable cruelty. It documents prisoners’ herculean efforts, under constant danger, to change situations declared “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.
Secret Footage Reveal Horrific Realities
Following their suddenly ended prison tour, the directors connected with men inside the state prison system. Guided by long-incarcerated organizers Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a group of sources provided years of evidence filmed on illegal cell phones. These recordings is disturbing:
- Rat-infested living spaces
- Heaps of human waste
- Spoiled meals and blood-streaked floors
- Routine guard violence
- Men removed out in remains pouches
- Corridors of individuals unresponsive on substances distributed by officers
Council begins the film in five years of isolation as punishment for his organizing; later in filming, he is nearly beaten to death by guards and suffers sight in an eye.
The Case of One Inmate: Brutality and Secrecy
This violence is, we learn, standard within the ADOC. While imprisoned sources continued to collect evidence, the directors investigated the killing of an inmate, who was assaulted beyond recognition by officers inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The documentary traces Davis’s parent, Sandy Ray, as she seeks truth from a uncooperative ADOC. The mother learns the official explanation—that Davis menaced officers with a weapon—on the television. But several imprisoned witnesses told the family's attorney that the inmate wielded only a plastic utensil and surrendered at once, only to be beaten by multiple officers regardless.
A guard, an officer, stomped the inmate's skull off the hard surface “like a basketball.”
After three years of obfuscation, the mother met with the state's “law-and-order” attorney general a state official, who told her that the state would not press criminal counts. The officer, who faced numerous separate lawsuits claiming brutality, was given a higher rank. The state covered for his legal bills, as well as those of all other guard—part of the $51 million spent by the government in the past five years to protect officers from wrongdoing claims.
Forced Work: A Modern-Day Slavery System
This government benefits economically from continued imprisonment without supervision. The Alabama Solution describes the shocking extent and double standard of the ADOC’s labor program, a forced-labor system that essentially functions as a present-day version of chattel slavery. The system supplies $450 million in products and work to the state each year for almost minimal wages.
Under the program, incarcerated laborers, mostly African American Alabamians considered unfit for the community, make two dollars a day—the identical daily wage rate set by Alabama for incarcerated labor in the year 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. They work more than half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the government building, the governor’s mansion, the Alabama supreme court, and municipal offices.
“They trust me to work in the public, but they don’t trust me to give me release to leave and return to my family.”
Such workers are numerically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those considered a greater security threat. “That gives you an understanding of how important this free workforce is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to maintain people locked up,” said Jarecki.
State-wide Strike and Ongoing Struggle
The documentary concludes in an incredible achievement of activism: a system-wide inmates' work stoppage calling for better treatment in 2022, organized by an activist and his co-organizer. Contraband mobile footage shows how prison authorities ended the protest in less than two weeks by depriving inmates collectively, assaulting Council, deploying soldiers to threaten and attack others, and cutting off contact from organizers.
The Country-wide Issue Outside Alabama
The protest may have ended, but the lesson was evident, and outside the borders of the region. Council ends the documentary with a plea for change: “The abuses that are occurring in this state are happening in your state and in your behalf.”
From the documented violations at the state of New York's a prison facility, to California’s use of over a thousand incarcerated firefighters to the danger zones of the Los Angeles wildfires for less than standard pay, “you see comparable situations in the majority of jurisdictions in the country,” said Jarecki.
“This is not only Alabama,” added the co-director. “We’re witnessing a resurgence of ‘tough on crime’ policy and language, and a punitive approach to {everything
