The Alabama Solution: Shining A Light On A Humanitarian Crisis

In a recent perspective on the social documentary subgenre, a few American filmmakers have studied the absurdity of the country’s prison system. Ava DuVernay did it in ’13th’, Stanley Nelson & Traci A. Curry documented the historical uprising in ‘Attica’, and JoeBill Muñoz & Lucas Guilkey chronicled the powerful fight for better conditions in ‘The Strike’. Through their films, these directors explored the multitude of complexities surrounding the largest incarcerated population in the world, mostly under a privatized prison system incentivizing the incarceration of millions in order to make a select few utterly rich. The Alabama Solution sees veteran director Andrew Jarecki, known for 2003’s ‘Capturing the Friedmans’ and ‘The Jinx’, partner with the newcomer Charlotte Kaufman, in his return to HBO Documentary Films.

The opening of the film has Jarecki and Kaufman highlight an eventful day in Alabama’s jails, one where an immense barbecue, prayers, and concerts cheer the prisoners. Meanwhile, intriguing off-camera reports lead them to investigate the poor conditions of the state’s facilities, resulting in an intricate dive by the duo. From there, they begin to expose an inhumane system, which rescues Alabama’s history with the Black population, remembering the violence, and profiting from the imprisonment Black men. Consequently, the film delivers an expansive look at a known problem in the Southern state; however, the directors disclose the motivations behind the insistence on allowing violence and a lack of adequate conditions for its jailed population.

Firstly, in telling its story, the film narrows its focus on Robert Earl Council and Melvin Ray, two men who have been part of the system for an extensive period, and understand the allowance of the higher-ups towards the brutal violence with the inmates. Because of their creation and political organizing of the Free Alabama Movement (FBM), they were split from the same facility, and sent to solitary confinement for five years. Yet, due to the poor management of these facilities and improper staffing, cellphones and heavy drugs, such as crack, are widely available inside these installations. As a result, Robert and Melvin since mobilized the carceral population and their families online, igniting pressure on the Department of Justice to promote investigations into the state’s structures.

The Alabama Solution is a tense examination of the ongoing humanitarian crisis talking place in Alabama prisons. Jarecki and Kaufman are not afraid of portraying heavy violence, efficiently inserted to expand the notion of it in those environments. The film is dense in its investigation, dating back from the early 2010s to recent events resulting in deaths, which sum to more than a thousand deceased individuals caused by violence and unsavory conditions. Making a film that fits firmly alongside the aforementioned ’13th’ and ‘Attica’, the three make for a triple feature centered around the hopeless panorama of the American correctional system. In Alabama, Black individuals suffered from slavery, the absence of civil rights, and a current system that is among the deadliest in the country. Over the course of 200+ years, the state has arguably believed that Black lives are somehow less valuable, a statement clearly reflected by the treatment of its prison population at the hands of the Alabama Department of Corrections.

With The Alabama Solution, directors Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman deliver a harsh and dense study on the humanitarian crisis taking place in the Alabama prison system. Reminding audiences of the kind of brutality that began in the 1800s, it proves that it is still a highly profitable strategy.

still courtesy of HBO

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Pedro Lima

Brazilian film writer. He is also a producer and executive producer for Zariah Filmes. Member of the International Film Society Critics Association (IFSCA), International Documentary Association (IDA), and Gotham and Media Film Institute.