Exposing this Appalling Truth Behind Alabama's Correctional Facility Mistreatment

When documentarians Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman entered Easterling prison in the year 2019, they witnessed a deceptively pleasant scene. Similar to the state's Alabama's prisons, Easterling largely bans media entry, but permitted the filmmakers to film its annual volunteer-run barbecue. On film, imprisoned men, mostly African American, celebrated and smiled to musical performances and religious talks. But behind the scenes, a contrasting narrative emerged—horrific assaults, hidden violent attacks, and indescribable violence swept under the rug. Cries for assistance were heard from overheated, filthy housing units. As soon as the director approached the sounds, a prison official stopped filming, stating it was dangerous to interact with the men without a security chaperone.

“It became apparent that certain sections of the prison that we were not allowed to view,” the filmmaker remembered. “They employ the excuse that it’s all about security and safety, because they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These facilities are like secret locations.”

The Revealing Documentary Uncovering Decades of Abuse

This interrupted barbecue event begins the documentary, a stunning new film produced over six years. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the two-hour film exposes a shockingly broken institution filled with unchecked abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable cruelty. The film chronicles prisoners’ tremendous efforts, under constant physical threat, to improve situations deemed “illegal” by the US justice department in the year 2020.

Secret Recordings Reveal Horrific Conditions

Following their suddenly terminated Easterling tour, the filmmakers connected with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by long-incarcerated organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Robert Earl Council, a group of insiders supplied multiple years of evidence recorded on contraband cell phones. These recordings is disturbing:

• Rat-infested cells
• Heaps of human waste
• Spoiled food and blood-stained floors
• Routine guard beatings
• Men removed out in remains pouches
• Corridors of individuals unresponsive on substances distributed by officers

One activist begins the film in half a decade of solitary confinement as retribution for his organizing; subsequently in filming, he is nearly beaten to death by guards and suffers vision in an eye.

A Case of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy

This brutality is, we learn, commonplace within the prison system. While imprisoned witnesses continued to collect proof, the directors investigated the death of Steven Davis, who was assaulted beyond recognition by guards inside the Donaldson prison in October 2019. The documentary follows the victim's parent, Sandy Ray, as she seeks answers from a uncooperative prison authority. She discovers the official version—that her son menaced officers with a knife—on the television. However multiple imprisoned observers informed Ray’s attorney that Davis wielded only a plastic knife and yielded at once, only to be beaten by multiple guards anyway.

One of them, Roderick Gadson, smashed the inmate's head off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

Following years of evasion, Sandy Ray spoke with Alabama’s “tough on crime” top lawyer a state official, who informed her that the state would not press charges. The officer, who faced more than 20 separate lawsuits alleging excessive force, was given a higher rank. The state covered for his legal bills, as well as those of every guard—part of the $51 million spent by the state of Alabama in the past five years to protect staff from misconduct claims.

Forced Work: A Modern-Day Exploitation System

This state profits economically from ongoing mass incarceration without oversight. The film describes the alarming extent and double standard of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work system that essentially functions as a present-day version of chattel slavery. This program provides $450 million in goods and work to the state annually for almost no pay.

In the system, imprisoned laborers, mostly Black residents deemed unfit for the community, make $2 a day—the identical pay scale established by Alabama for incarcerated workers in the year 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. These individuals labor upwards of 12 hours for corporate entities or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“They trust me to work in the public, but they refuse me to grant parole to get out and return to my family.”

Such laborers are statistically more unlikely to be released than those who are not, even those considered a greater security threat. “That gives you an understanding of how important this low-cost labor is to the state, and how critical it is for them to keep individuals imprisoned,” said Jarecki.

Prison-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The documentary culminates in an remarkable feat of activism: a system-wide inmates' work stoppage demanding better conditions in October 2022, organized by an activist and his co-organizer. Contraband mobile video reveals how ADOC ended the protest in less than two weeks by depriving inmates collectively, assaulting the leader, sending soldiers to threaten and attack participants, and severing communication from organizers.

A National Problem Outside One State

The strike may have ended, but the message was evident, and beyond the borders of the region. Council ends the film with a plea for change: “The abuses that are occurring in Alabama are taking place in your region and in the public's name.”

From the reported violations at New York’s Rikers Island, to California’s deployment of 1,100 incarcerated firefighters to the danger zones of the Los Angeles wildfires for less than standard pay, “you see comparable things in the majority of states in the union,” noted Jarecki.

“This is not only Alabama,” added the co-director. “There is a resurgence of ‘law-and-order’ approaches and language, and a punitive approach to {everything