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As documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited the Easterling facility in the year 2019, they witnessed a misleadingly cheerful scene. Similar to other Alabama prisons, Easterling mostly prohibits media entry, but permitted the filmmakers to record its annual community-organized barbecue. On film, incarcerated men, predominantly Black, celebrated and smiled to live music and sermons. But off camera, a contrasting narrative surfaced—terrifying assaults, hidden violent attacks, and unimaginable violence concealed from public view. Pleas for assistance were heard from overheated, dirty housing units. When Jarecki approached the voices, a corrections officer halted filming, stating it was unsafe to interact with the men without a security escort.

“It was obvious that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” Jarecki recalled. “They employ the excuse that everything is about safety and safety, because they don’t want you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are like secret locations.”

The Stunning Documentary Exposing Years of Abuse

This interrupted cookout meeting begins the documentary, a stunning new documentary produced over six years. Collaboratively directed by Jarecki and his partner, the feature-length film reveals a gallingly broken system rife with unchecked abuse, compulsory work, and unimaginable cruelty. It documents inmates' herculean struggles, under constant physical threat, to change conditions deemed “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in 2020.

Secret Recordings Reveal Horrific Conditions

After their suddenly terminated Easterling visit, the directors made contact with men inside the Alabama department of corrections. Led by veteran organizers Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun and Kinetik Justice, a network of insiders provided multiple years of evidence recorded on illegal cell phones. The footage is ghastly:

• Rat-infested cells
• Piles of human waste
• Spoiled meals and blood-streaked surfaces
• Regular guard beatings
• Men removed out in body bags
• Corridors of individuals unresponsive on drugs distributed by staff

One activist starts the film in five years of solitary confinement as punishment for his organizing; later in filming, he is nearly killed by guards and loses sight in an eye.

The Story of Steven Davis: Violence and Secrecy

This violence is, the film shows, commonplace within the ADOC. While imprisoned witnesses persisted to collect evidence, the directors investigated the killing of an inmate, who was beaten beyond recognition by guards inside the Donaldson prison in 2019. The documentary traces the victim's parent, a family member, as she seeks truth from a recalcitrant ADOC. The mother learns the state’s version—that Davis threatened guards with a knife—on the news. But several imprisoned witnesses informed the family's lawyer that the inmate held only a plastic knife and yielded immediately, only to be assaulted by four officers regardless.

A guard, an officer, stomped the inmate's head off the concrete floor “like a basketball.”

Following three years of obfuscation, the mother spoke with Alabama’s “tough on crime” attorney general Steve Marshall, who told her that the state would decline to file charges. Gadson, who had more than 20 separate lawsuits claiming excessive force, was given a higher rank. The state paid for his defense costs, as well as those of all other officer—part of the $51m used by the state of Alabama in the past five years to protect officers from wrongdoing lawsuits.

Forced Labor: The Modern-Day Slavery System

This government profits financially from ongoing mass incarceration without oversight. The film details the alarming scope and hypocrisy of the prison system's work initiative, a compulsory-work system that essentially functions as a present-day mutation of chattel slavery. This program provides $450m in products and services to the state annually for almost minimal wages.

In the system, incarcerated laborers, mostly African American Alabamians deemed unfit for society, earn two dollars a 24-hour period—the identical pay scale established by Alabama for incarcerated workers in 1927, at the peak of racial segregation. These individuals 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 local government entities.

“They trust me to work in the community, but they don’t trust me to grant release to leave and go home to my family.”

These workers are statistically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are do not participate, even those deemed a higher public safety risk. “That gives you an idea of how valuable this low-cost workforce is to the state, and how important it is for them to keep people imprisoned,” stated the director.

Prison-wide Strike and Ongoing Struggle

The documentary concludes in an incredible feat of activism: a state-wide inmates' work stoppage calling for better conditions in 2022, led by Council and Melvin Ray. Illegal cell phone video reveals how prison authorities broke the protest in less than two weeks by starving inmates collectively, assaulting Council, sending personnel to intimidate and beat participants, and severing contact from strike leaders.

A Country-wide Issue Outside One State

This strike may have ended, but the lesson was clear, and outside the state of the region. An activist concludes the documentary with a plea for change: “The things that are occurring in this state are happening in every region and in your behalf.”

From the reported violations at the state of New York's a prison facility, to California’s deployment of 1,100 imprisoned firefighters to the danger zones of the Los Angeles wildfires for less than standard pay, “one observes comparable situations in most states in the union,” said the filmmaker.

“This isn’t just Alabama,” added the co-director. “There is a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and rhetoric, and a retributive approach to {everything