This movie is horrifying and shaming and unspeakable but it deserves our attention, because all the horrifying, shaming, unspeakable things within it are happening to human beings. This is often forgotten in prison discourse, that every prisoner is a person too. Regardless of the worst things we have ever done, we all deserve medical treatment, safe food and human interaction. And as we all know the American prison system generally does not provide this, not least in how our national use of solitary confinement is a global catastrophe. But when a person is looking at the bigger picture, it helps to start small, in this case with the great state of Alabama. This documentary, codirected by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, uses hidden cellphone footage from inside the Alabama prisons to show, brutally and painfully, just what the men inside those prisons are enduring.
Almost entirely filmed between 2013-2023, The Alabama Solution largely focuses on two separate but related situations in the state’s prison system: the attempts of three prisoners, who have been forcibly separated from each other, to organise better conditions for the prisoners. Their attempts are possible because thanks to overcrowding and understaffing illegal cellphones are everywhere, even in the hands of those in solitary confinement. Several of the prisoners regularly videocalled Ms. Kaufman to keep her updated on their news, and when possible they would use the phone to film events within the prison. The other strand is the attempts of the family of a man who was beaten to death by a prison guard to hold someone responsible. This would have been impossible if the victim’s brother hadn’t snuck a cellphone past armed guards and taken a deathbed photograph, which is so shocking it silenced the room at the Sheffield DocFest. But the worst is the sequence where we learn a prison has no medical staff, only one untrained volunteer prisoner with some binders of advice and his good will, undercut with footage of men violently overdosing. It’s right on the edge of what human horror a documentary can responsibly show.
The trouble is some people are thrilled by the chance to torture and harm others. And it’s hard to know whether any documentary, regardless of its excellence, will cause that kind of person to develop a conscience. This is a completely unbearable thing to write. But that’s nothing compared to what the men inside the Alabama prison system are enduring as shown here. The important journalism from everyone involved in this film shines a light into the American prison system to show what violence is being done with our tax dollars and in our names. There’s very little hope here —the titular solution is the spending of billions of dollars to build three mega-prisons instead of hiring better workers or improving prison conditions, starting with the food – except the fact The Alabama Solution exists at all is very hopeful. A lot of people have risked their freedom to tell the truth about their lives for this documentary and this sacrifice must be respected. Because, regardless of what they have done to end up in prison, every single prisoner is a person first.
The Alabama Solution recently played at Sheffield DocFest.
Learn more about the film at the official Sheffield site for the title.
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