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As documentarians Andrew Jarecki and his co-director visited Easterling prison in 2019, they encountered a deceptively pleasant scene. Like the state's Alabama prisons, Easterling mostly prohibits media access, but permitted the filmmakers to film its yearly community-organized barbecue. During film, incarcerated men, predominantly African American, danced and smiled to live music and sermons. But behind the scenes, a different story emerged—horrific assaults, unreported stabbings, and indescribable brutality swept under the rug. Cries for assistance came from sweltering, filthy dorms. When Jarecki approached the voices, a prison official halted recording, stating it was dangerous to speak with the inmates without a police escort.

“It became apparent that there were areas of the prison that we were not allowed to see,” the filmmaker recalled. “They employ the idea that everything is about safety and security, since they aim to prevent you from comprehending what is occurring. These prisons are similar to secret locations.”

A Revealing Film Uncovering Years of Abuse

This interrupted cookout event begins the documentary, a stunning new film made over half a decade. Co-directed by the director and his partner, the feature-length film exposes a gallingly corrupt institution rife with unregulated mistreatment, compulsory work, and unimaginable brutality. The film documents prisoners’ tremendous struggles, under constant danger, to change conditions deemed “unconstitutional” by the federal authorities in the year 2020.

Secret Footage Reveal Horrific Realities

After their suddenly ended Easterling tour, the directors connected with men inside the state prison system. Guided by veteran activists Melvin Ray and Kinetik Justice, a group of insiders supplied years of footage filmed on contraband mobile devices. These recordings is ghastly:

• Rat-infested cells
• Piles of excrement
• Spoiled food and blood-streaked floors
• Routine guard violence
• Inmates removed out in body bags
• Hallways of individuals near-catatonic on substances distributed by staff

One activist begins the film in five years of solitary confinement as punishment for his activism; later in filming, he is almost beaten to death by officers and suffers vision in an eye.

The Case of One Inmate: Brutality and Obfuscation

Such violence is, we learn, commonplace within the ADOC. While imprisoned witnesses persisted to collect proof, the filmmakers looked into the death of an inmate, who was beaten beyond recognition by officers inside the Donaldson correctional facility in 2019. The documentary follows the victim's parent, a family member, as she seeks answers from a uncooperative prison authority. She learns the official version—that Davis menaced officers with a weapon—on the television. However several imprisoned witnesses told Ray’s lawyer that Davis held only a toy utensil and yielded immediately, only to be assaulted by four officers anyway.

A guard, an officer, stomped the inmate's skull off the hard surface “repeatedly.”

After years of obfuscation, Sandy Ray spoke with Alabama’s “law-and-order” attorney general Steve Marshall, who informed her that the authorities would not press criminal counts. The officer, who faced numerous separate legal actions alleging brutality, was given a higher rank. The state covered for his legal bills, as well as those of all other guard—part of the $51m used by the government in the last half-decade to protect staff from misconduct lawsuits.

Compulsory Labor: A Contemporary Exploitation Scheme

The government profits economically from ongoing imprisonment without oversight. The film describes the shocking scope and double standard of the ADOC’s work initiative, a compulsory-work system that effectively functions as a modern-day version of chattel slavery. This program provides $450m in goods and services to the state each year for almost minimal wages.

In the system, imprisoned laborers, mostly African American residents considered unsuitable for the community, earn $2 a 24-hour period—the same daily wage rate established by the state for incarcerated labor in 1927, at the height of Jim Crow. They work more than half a day for corporate entities or government locations including the state capitol, the executive residence, the judicial branch, and municipal offices.

“Authorities allow me to work in the public, but they refuse me to grant release to get out and go home to my family.”

These workers are statistically more unlikely to be paroled than those who are not, even those deemed a greater public safety threat. “This illustrates you an understanding of how valuable this free labor is to Alabama, and how important it is for them to maintain people imprisoned,” stated the director.

Prison-wide Protest and Continued Struggle

The documentary concludes in an incredible achievement of organizing: a system-wide prisoners’ work stoppage demanding better treatment in 2022, led by Council and his co-organizer. Contraband cell phone video reveals how ADOC ended the protest in 11 days by starving inmates collectively, assaulting the leader, deploying personnel to intimidate and attack participants, and cutting off contact from strike leaders.

The Country-wide Issue Outside Alabama

The strike may have ended, but the lesson was clear, and outside the state of Alabama. An activist ends the film with a plea for change: “The abuses that are occurring in this state are happening in every state and in your name.”

Starting with the reported violations at the state of New York's Rikers Island, to the state of California's deployment of over a thousand imprisoned emergency responders to the frontlines of the Los Angeles wildfires for below minimum wage, “one observes comparable things in most jurisdictions in the country,” noted the filmmaker.

“This is not just one state,” added the co-director. “There is a new wave of ‘tough on crime’ policy and language, and a retributive approach to {everything