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As documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director entered the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly pleasant scene. Like other Alabama correctional institutions, Easterling mostly prohibits media access, but allowed the crew to record its annual volunteer-run barbecue. On film, incarcerated men, mostly Black, danced and laughed to musical performances and religious talks. But off camera, a different narrative emerged—horrific beatings, hidden violent attacks, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for help came from sweltering, filthy dorms. As soon as the director approached the voices, a prison official halted recording, stating it was unsafe to speak with the men without a police chaperone.

“It was very clear that there were areas of the facility that we were not allowed to view,” the filmmaker recalled. “They use the excuse that everything is about security and security, because they don’t want you from comprehending what is occurring. These facilities are similar to black sites.”

A Stunning Documentary Exposing Decades of Abuse

That thwarted cookout meeting opens the documentary, a stunning new documentary produced over half a decade. Co-directed by the director and Kaufman, the two-hour film exposes a shockingly broken institution rife with unchecked abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable cruelty. It chronicles inmates' herculean efforts, under ongoing physical threat, to improve situations declared “illegal” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Covert Recordings Reveal Horrific Realities

After their abruptly terminated Easterling tour, the directors made contact with individuals inside the Alabama department of corrections. Guided by long-incarcerated activists Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council, a group of sources supplied years of footage filmed on contraband cell phones. These recordings is disturbing:

• Vermin-ridden cells
• Piles of excrement
• Rotting meals and blood-stained floors
• Routine guard beatings
• Inmates removed out in remains pouches
• Hallways of men unresponsive on drugs sold by staff

One activist begins the documentary in five years of solitary confinement as retribution for his activism; later in filming, he is nearly killed by officers and suffers sight in an eye.

The Story of Steven Davis: Brutality and Obfuscation

This violence is, we learn, commonplace within the prison system. While imprisoned witnesses persisted to gather evidence, the filmmakers looked into the killing of Steven Davis, who was beaten beyond recognition by officers inside the William E Donaldson correctional facility in October 2019. The documentary follows the victim's parent, a family member, as she seeks answers from a uncooperative prison authority. The mother learns the state’s version—that Davis threatened guards with a weapon—on the television. However several incarcerated observers informed the family's attorney that Davis held only a plastic utensil and surrendered immediately, only to be beaten by four guards regardless.

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

After three years of obfuscation, the mother spoke with Alabama’s “law-and-order” top lawyer a state official, who informed her that the state would not press charges. The officer, who faced more than 20 separate lawsuits claiming brutality, was given a higher rank. The state paid for his legal bills, as well as those of all other officer—part of the $51m spent by the state of Alabama in the last half-decade to defend officers from misconduct lawsuits.

Forced Work: The Modern-Day Exploitation Scheme

The state profits financially from continued imprisonment without supervision. The film details the shocking scope and double standard of the prison system's labor program, a compulsory-work arrangement that essentially functions as a present-day version of historical bondage. The system supplies $450m in goods and work to the state annually for virtually minimal wages.

Under the system, imprisoned laborers, overwhelmingly Black residents deemed unfit for the community, make two dollars a day—the same daily wage rate established by Alabama for imprisoned workers in 1927, at the peak of Jim Crow. They labor more than half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the government building, the governor’s mansion, the judicial branch, and local government entities.

“They trust me to labor in the public, but they don’t trust me to give me release to leave and go home to my loved ones.”

Such workers are numerically less likely to be released than those who are do not participate, even those considered a greater security risk. “That gives you an idea of how valuable this low-cost labor is to Alabama, and how critical it is for them to maintain individuals imprisoned,” said Jarecki.

State-wide Strike and Continued Struggle

The documentary culminates in an incredible feat of organizing: a system-wide inmates' strike calling for better conditions in October 2022, led by Council and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone video shows how prison authorities broke the strike in 11 days by starving inmates en masse, assaulting the leader, deploying soldiers to threaten and beat participants, and severing contact from organizers.

A National Problem Beyond Alabama

The protest may have ended, but the message was evident, and beyond the state of the region. Council ends the film with a call to action: “The things that are occurring in this state are taking place in your region and in the public's behalf.”

Starting with the documented violations at New York’s Rikers Island, to California’s use of over a thousand imprisoned emergency responders to the danger zones of the LA fires for below minimum wage, “one observes comparable things in most states in the country,” said Jarecki.

“This isn’t just one state,” added the co-director. “There is a new wave of ‘law-and-order’ policy and rhetoric, and a punitive approach to {everything