Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman’s investigative film, “The Alabama Solution,” unveils the dark realities of Alabama’s prison system through the harrowing accounts and footage captured by incarcerated individuals. The film exposes inhumane living conditions, forced labor, and rampant violence, raising urgent questions about the state of American corrections.
I’ve been recommending “The Alabama Solution” to everyone I meet since I landed at the Sundance Film Festival last week — but only under my breath. That’s because Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman’s bombshell investigation of the Alabama prison system, which premiered here Tuesday, was screened in advance for press under strict embargo. Understandable, once you realize that the film’s key sources are inmates themselves.
Much of “The Alabama Solution,” which reports on inhumane living conditions, forced labor and widespread violence against the state’s incarcerated population, is comprised largely of footage captured by inmates using contraband cellphones, offering one of the most shocking, visceral depictions of our carceral state ever put to film. The result, in which brave inmate activists Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council leak vital information, and the filmmakers chase down leads with shoe-leather doggedness, should outrage the nation. And encourage us to reexamine our own backyards: As co-producer Alex Duran reminded me, California voters recently rejected a ballot measure that would have banned forced prison labor, and incarcerated firefighters were instrumental to the battle against the recent L.A. wildfires. Jarecki and Kaufman sat down with me at the L.A. Times Studios at Sundance to discuss the risks their sources face with the film’s release, what they’d like to ask Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and more. The following has been edited and condensed. Before we talk about the genesis of the film, I wanted to start with your interest in the subject matter of the film: mass incarceration, the criminal justice system, prison conditions. What was your level of interest in that topic before 'The Alabama Solution'? Andrew Jarecki: I remember going to see Jesse Friedman at Dannemora Correctional Facility when I was making 'Capturing the Friedmans,' and the experience of going into a maximum-security facility in upstate New York was such a surprise to me — just the level of lockdown, the level of closure to the outside world and certainly to journalists. So it always intrigued me. And then I'd made films about various aspects of the justice system. So when I went down to Alabama in 2019, just to sort of go to Montgomery and see what I would see, I met this prison chaplain and I realized that they went into the prisons and did barbecues and revival meetings. I thought. 'Maybe there's an opportunity to go there and learn something.' And I don't think I thought about it as a film up front. I just was curious. But then when it became clear that there was a possibility for us to film, Charlotte and I got together and and went down there and we had this really extraordinary chance to go into a place that is normally absolutely closed to the media and to the public. Charlotte, I wonder if you could talk about the story of that day at the barbecue. I'm curious, did you have a kind of vision of what you thought you were doing before you arrived that day? Obviously, once the prisoners start coming up to you and and saying, 'There's a story here that they're not showing you,' that changed it, but did you have a different vision going in? Charlotte Kaufman: I think we went in with open minds. You rarely get the opportunity to go into a prison facility in Alabama, and I think we saw this as a great opportunity to be able to speak with some of the men, to just observe what we could around the facility, to learn what we could. But very quickly it became clear that there were only certain conversations that we were allowed to have and that we weren't allowed to speak to the men alone. And I think that lack of access sort of compelled us to keep investigating. After the first scene in the film, there's a title card that explains that after your visit, you started getting outreach from inmates within the prison on contraband cellphones. And the footage from those calls that they're sending you is at the core of the film, and it's part of what makes it so shocking and outrageous. Take me back to the first outreach that you got. What was your reaction? Jarecki: I mean, we were surprised when we went in there at the proliferation of cellphones. The fact that Alabama's prisons are so extraordinarily understaffed and under-resourced means that the prisons are often operating with skeleton crew of people. So you could have a 1,400-bed facility and that normally would be staffed with a few hundred officers. And maybe on a weekend there are 20 officers there. So that indicates that there's a very low level of understanding even by correctional officers. There are large areas of the prison that they don't spend any time in. So the ability to speak to these men on these cellphones, which are, in my view, largely brought in by the officers — there's a big trade in cellphones — that was just a surprise to u
Dokumentary Prison Reform Criminal Justice Alabama Inmates Forced Labor Prison Conditions Human Rights
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