“The Alabama Solution”: Oscar-Nominated Film Uses Prisoner Cellphones to Show U.S.’s Deadliest Prisons

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We turn now to The Alabama Solution, the Oscar-nominated documentary that takes viewers inside what’s been described as “America’s deadliest prison system,” the film based on footage secretly recorded on cellphones by prisoners locked up in Alabama. Some of them featured in the film were recently sent to solitary confinement. This is the film’s trailer.

UNIDENTIFIED PRISON STAFF: I know you’re grieving, but I just — I wanted to tell you that your son was murdered. They sweep stuff underneath the rug all the time.

STACY GEORGE: If you’re an inmate in Alabama prison, you’re probably praying every night that nothing bad happens to you. It’s dangerous and volatile. It could explode at any moment.

SANDY RAY: I mean, it’s corrupt. That’s all you can say.

TINA MORROW: They’re hiding something.

PRISON OFFICIAL: We’re finished.

ANDREW JARECKI: What are we finished with?

PRISON OFFICIAL: Filming. Filming.

ANDREW JARECKI: Why?

MELVIN RAY: Can you hear me?

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: Yeah.

MELVIN RAY: Hold on a minute. Police are here.

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: Oh, OK.

MELVIN RAY: Don’t talk.

KINETIK JUSTICE: We have record numbers of people leaving out of here in body bags. They don’t want the public to see what’s really going on on the inside.

MELVIN RAY: How can a journalist go into a war zone but can’t go into a prison in the United States of America?

The state is settling one lawsuit after another. There’s no consequences for their actions.

It’s not the inmates that’s killing them folks. It’s the guards.

ATTORNEY GENERAL STEVE MARSHALL: There is an argument that there is some systemic problem within all of our facilities, and I wholeheartedly disagree with that.

KINETIK JUSTICE: How can you defend this?

SANDY RAY: That one guard, he knew something. I can tell he was a liar.

JEFFERSON DUNN: We are going to pursue it based on the facts to the fullest extent that — that we’re allowed.

KINETIK JUSTICE: Their biggest fear is to see us come together on one accord. We’ve got to take our power back. We have to come together and make a stand that our life is worth something.

PRISONER: I came to prison in 1985. I know what these folks will do.

KINETIK JUSTICE: We have been taking life-and-death risk to get this information out while we still can.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the trailer to The Alabama Solution, the HBO Original documentary, available to stream now on HBO Max.

We’re joined by three guests. Tiffany Johnson Cole is with us, civil rights and civil litigation attorney in Mobile, Alabama. She is a childhood friend and attorney for Robert Earl Council, who’s known as Kinetik Justice. He’s featured in the film. We interviewed him about 10 years ago. He is so often for — actually, for years has been held in solitary confinement.

We’re also joined here in New York by the film’s co-directors, Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman. The two also worked together on the HBO series The Jinx. Andrew is also the director of the Oscar-nominated documentary Capturing the Friedmans.

Welcome, all, to Democracy Now! Andrew, let’s begin with you. Lay out The Alabama Solution, what you found when you went to Alabama. And how did you get in these prisons?

ANDREW JARECKI: Well, it was kind of a miracle that we got access to the prisons, because prisons in the U.S. are kind of black sites. And, you know, we drive by these prisons, and we see a little sign at the side of the road, and we assume, “Well, whatever’s happening back there, if it was really terrible, I guess I’d hear about it.” But because journalists aren’t allowed in these prisons, you actually don’t hear about it.

So, I was interested in the Alabama prison system, and I took a sort of road trip to just go down there. And I met this prison chaplain, the first Black prison chaplain in the history of Alabama. And he said, “Well, if you’re interested, come in, and, you know, you’ll volunteer.” And I said, “Well, we’re filmmakers. They’re not going to let us in there with cameras.” And he said, “Well, just come in, and we’ll distribute food packages and meet the men, and you’ll see what’s going on.”

And then, when we went in, we managed to establish a relationship with a warden, who said, “Well, you can come in and film, like, this revival meeting,” which is a very beautiful Christian celebration. And when we went in to film that, which was unusual, the men started whispering to us that there were really terrible things going on that we weren’t allowed to see, and they were curating our visit. And then, eventually, we get sort of nosy, and we get thrown out.

And it was after that that we discovered that there were sort of a network of men inside who had access to contraband cellphones, and there were these incredible leaders of a nonviolent protest movement who wanted to speak and had been speaking for years about it. And so, that became a sort of a collaboration, in a way, where we were doing an investigation with their help.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is astounding, Charlotte. Most of what we’re looking at is cellphone footage taken by and narrated by the prisoners themselves. Where do they get the cellphones?

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: Well, many of the cellphones, you know, from our investigation, observation, come in through the guards or —

AMY GOODMAN: These are contraband cellphones.

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: Yes, yeah. And they’ve been — they’ve been in the system since around 2013, and the men in our film have been using them as a way to overcome the secrecy that shrouds all prisons in the U.S., since that time. But it is interesting that, you know, a lot of the phones are brought in by guards or with the permission of guards, even though they’re then being used to document and expose things that the guards may be doing or the administration may be doing.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s go to a clip from The Alabama Solution. This is you, our guest, filmmaker Charlotte Kaufman, receiving a call from Melvin Ray, who’s a prisoner, from prison.

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: Would a regular phone call be better?

MELVIN RAY: No, because it does not allow us to just be ourselves. You know, when we present our stories, we want to present our whole self, not just our voice.

We’re in these walled-off, secret societies. These are state institutions, but it’s one of the only state institutions that the public or the media has no access to. How can a journalist go into a war zone but can’t go into a prison in the United States of America?

ON-SCREEN TEXT: The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that wardens can effectively deny journalists access to prisons by citing “safety and security” concerns.

MELVIN RAY: But I can witness a murder. We could be all sitting here and witness a murder. And the media can’t even come onto state property.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s, again, a clip from the Oscar-nominated Alabama Solution. Andrew Jarecki, what you show with these films, I mean, you have this prisoner saying, “I could witness a murder. Journalists cannot come in.” It is astounding to think about this. They can go to war, but they can’t come into prisons run by the U.S. government.

ANDREW JARECKI: Well, there’s no question that the — you know, any authoritarian administration does not want you to see what’s going on inside. That’s one of the reasons why Alex Pretti got killed — right? — is because he was using a cellphone, which they then described as a weapon. So, when you have a secretive system, they can’t really continue to do what they’re doing if there’s enough public pressure, which is one of the reasons why Alabama is so anxious about this film. The governor didn’t come out and say anything about it for around a year, and then, when the film got nominated, she immediately came out with a statement sort of discrediting the film and saying, actually, she’s been the best governor, running the best — you know, best effort to try to improve prisons of any governor in the history of Alabama. Interesting distinction.

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: But I would also say it’s not just Alabama. It’s all across the country. We spend $80 billion a year on prisons and jails and incarcerate 2 million people, and yet the public’s not allowed to see in and evaluate whether it is — the system is fulfilling its mandate. And so, I think what Melvin is trying to tell us is, you know, we should be demanding transparency and evaluating whether these systems are actually serving us or causing great harm.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to another clip from The Alabama Solution. The clip begins with text messages from a prisoner named Melvin Ray writing, “I have some information for you. … Word is an inmate got beaten real bad at Donaldson Prison … Sent to UAB Hospital ICU.” Melvin said the man’s name was Steven Davis.

ANDREW JARECKI: We’re looking for Steven Davis. We think he’s in the ICU.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re looking in the hospital right now. Someone has a cellphone. And the elevator doors open, and they’re going down the hallway. They’re clearly looking for the room where Steven is. And then they see a room that says “Davis,” and they look through the curtains. The curtains are closed.

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: It’s a body bag.

ANDREW JARECKI: It’s a what?

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: It’s a body bag.

ANDREW JARECKI: That person is not…

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: Not alive.

NURSE: If you could — if you could go out to the wait room, or I can help you by call-in, but I’d prefer you not stand in front of the room.

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: OK, sure.

NURSE: Thanks.

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: We should find his family,

AMY GOODMAN: Charlotte, that was you saying — you were looking through the curtain and saying it’s a body bag?

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: Yes, Andrew and I were both at the hospital that day. And the reason — you know, we got this text message that informed us that someone had been beaten and taken to the hospital, and the reason we immediately went to the hospital is because, from our investigation and our research, we knew that often the prison system doesn’t tell family members about what happened, or doesn’t report anything publicly until sometimes weeks later, and that, by that point, the story of what actually occurred can be very muddled. So, in that scene, we’re trying to stay on top of the information and begin an investigation into what we find out is the killing of a man at the hands of a correctional officer.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to another clip from The Alabama Solution. In this clip, an anonymous prison staff member calls Sandy. She’s the mother of Steven Davis, who was killed when incarcerated at Donaldson Correctional Facility. She wears oxygen, and so she has to take some time to get this call.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: Later that evening, an unidentified staff member from Donaldson Prison calls Sandy.

SANDY RAY: Hello? I’m sorry. I’m on oxygen, so I had to take a minute there.

UNIDENTIFIED PRISON STAFF: OK, I understand.

SANDY RAY: Who’s this?

UNIDENTIFIED PRISON STAFF: Well, don’t — you know, I’m just — I know you’re grieving, in mourning, but I just — I wanted to tell you that your son was beaten to death by an officer. That was a murder. You know, they sweep stuff underneath the rug all the time about this.

SANDY RAY: I called the warden this afternoon. An hour later, there was a statement on the news that he rushed out of cell with two home-made weapons and attacked them.

UNIDENTIFIED PRISON STAFF: With a plastic knife. They always come up with something to justify excess brutality and use of force.

AMY GOODMAN: Andrew Jarecki, we’re watching Sandy, Davis’s mom, Steven Davis’s mom, get this call — who is it from? — where she’s told her son has been murdered by guards.

ANDREW JARECKI: Yeah, I mean, we know who the call came from, and we were just being discreet in the film, because it’s very rare to have a whistleblower who’s on the staff at the prison tell somebody the truth of what happened. But I think this is a person who has higher character than a lot of other people who witness things like this in the prison, and he felt compelled to reach out to the mother of somebody who he had learned had been murdered at the hands of corrections officers. So, he was seeing the story that the prison was putting out, which was that Steven had attacked guards, which is absurd, and immediately felt like he had to call the mother and say, “Look, at least you should know this.”

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, the picture, the photograph — and, Charlotte, you can talk about this photograph they have of Steven Davis’s head. Who took it? How horrifying it is.

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: Yeah. So, Steven’s brother Brandon took a photo when, as he explains, the guards were out back sleeping at the hospital, because the — while Steven was in ICU, the prison officials made sure there was a presence at the hospital to let the family know and to let Steven know, just in case he woke up, that they were watching. And they told Sandy and Steven’s brother, “You cannot come into the room with Steven.” But while they were — the guards were away, Steven’s brother snuck a photo. And I’ll also say we met Steven’s dad, as well. And the dad, when we were initially going to speak to the dad, he said, “Are you from the news? Because the prison told us that if we speak to the news, they won’t give us back the body.” So, this idea of sort of hiding what’s happening in the prisons, and even hiding bodies, you know, is very striking.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the staff at the hospital. Let’s go to another clip of The Alabama Solution, where we hear from former correctional officers Stacy George and Quante Cockrell. The clip ends with the prisoners themselves.

STACY GEORGE: Correctional officers should be the most reliable, trustworthy. You really want people that will do the right thing when nobody’s watching. But in Alabama, you don’t have that.

QUANTE COCKRELL: Every day I thought I shouldn’t be participating in this. There’s just so much stuff happening in there. So now there’s a lot of officers leaving.

STACY GEORGE: Sometimes we have one officer for 200, 300 inmates. With the low staffing and the mandatory overtime, you’ve got officers that look like zombies.

PRISONER 1: Look at this man in the cube, asleep.

PRISONER 2: That’s the cube. Ain’t no police in the cube. None. Ain’t no police in the dorm, nowhere in the dorm.

AMY GOODMAN: Another clip from The Alabama Solution. I want to bring in our third guest, Tiffany Johnson Cole. Tiffany, you are a civil rights and civil litigation attorney. You’re also a childhood friend and attorney for Robert Earl Council, also known as Kinetik justice. We spoke to him 10 years ago, and we’ll get to him in a minute. But talk about the lawsuit that you have brought.

TIFFANY JOHNSON COLE: Most recently — well, we had an initial lawsuit in 2021, wherein Robert Earl was assaulted by guards. And we since settled a portion of that lawsuit against the guards, and actually went to a jury trial and won in Jefferson County against the medical provider. The most recent lawsuit, though, deals — is a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction that deals with the transfer of Robert Earl, Raoul and Melvin between January 12th and 13th to the L dorm, which is located at Kilby, which is considered a highly restrictive area, often associated with intimidation. They were transferred between January 12th and 13th for what we believe was protected speech by people they associate with on the outside. And so, that lawsuit is still pending.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to the backdrop of the Free Alabama Movement, Andrew, going back 10 years to this strike that they led across the state. In fact, it went beyond that.

ANDREW JARECKI: Well, I think it’s most notable that these men have always observed peaceful protest movements, whether that’s a labor stoppage, because, you know, that can be powerful. Alabama has $450 million a year in unpaid labor that they benefit from. So, if the men undertake a work stoppage, it’s a real threat to the way the system —

AMY GOODMAN: You mean they’re sort of running the prison. I mean, they’re being directed, but…

ANDREW JARECKI: Yes, but way beyond that. I think the average person thinks, “OK, well, somebody is in prison. Maybe they’re supposed to sweep up, or they’re supposed to serve a meal or something.” I think what shocks people is that they’re farmed out, not just to the governor’s mansion. They work on road crews. They work on construction for the state. And beyond that, they’re leased out to McDonald’s and Burger King and the Hyundai parts company and the Budweiser distributorship. So it really is very — 

AMY GOODMAN: And how much are they paid?

ANDREW JARECKI: Well, in the film, you see one of the people who works in sanitation is being paid $2 a day. And they’re charging the state of Alabama — the Department of Corrections is charging, you know, $10 or more per hour for these people. So it’s a very, very lucrative thing. And the other thing the men will do sometimes is go on hunger strike. And so, it’s always peaceful, and yet the way the state deals with it is always through violence.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to bring in Robert Earl’s voice, also known as Kinetik Justice. About 10 years ago, in 2016, we spoke to Kinetik Justice, co-founder of the Free Alabama Movement, about the prisoners’ strike.

KINETIK JUSTICE: These strikes are our method for challenging mass incarceration. As we understand it, the prison system is a continuation of the slave system, and which in all entities is an economical system. Therefore, for the reform and changes that we’ve been fighting for in Alabama, we’ve tried petitioning through the courts. We’ve tried to get in touch with our legislators and so forth. And we haven’t had any recourse. Therefore, we understood that our incarceration was pretty much about our labor and the money that was being generated through the prison system, therefore we began organizing around our labor and used it as a means and a method in order to bring about reform in the Alabama prison system.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Kinetik Justice, Robert Earl, back in 2016 on Democracy Now! He was at Holman, I think, in Alabama at the time. Tiffany Johnson Cole, you grew up with him. I mean, he is a leader of this [Free Alabama] Movement.

TIFFANY JOHNSON COLE: Yes, he and I grew up together. And as a result of what he experienced when he became incarcerated, he and Melvin and other incarcerated persons joined together to create the Free Alabama Movement, to basically call attention to the conditions that are inhumane, that are being carried out in the name of the state. And so, both Melvin and Robert Earl are extremely intelligent, strategic and legal minds. They have studied the law. It’s always interesting to me how we can go back and debate some of the legal theories in some of their pleadings, in some of their filings. But they have pretty much put themselves in harm’s way in an effort to bring about change in a system that is truly cruel and inhumane.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to the title of The Alabama Solution. This is Alabama Governor Kay Ivey.

GOV. KAY IVEY: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Please be seated. You heard me say this before, and I’ll say it again. This is an Alabama problem that must have an Alabama solution. I look forward to working with each of you to solve it. I’ve asked Commissioner Dunn to build three new prisons that will transition our facilities from warehousing inmates to rehabilitating people.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Alabama Governor Kay Ivey. And this, Andrew, is you questioning Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall.

ATTORNEY GENERAL STEVE MARSHALL: I think we have a strategic plan in place. There’s an argument that there is some systemic problem within all of our facilities, and I wholeheartedly disagree with that. “We dare defend our rights.” That is a motto of the state that I think matters. We have the opportunity to push back against what we think is an overreach of the Department of Justice. We don’t necessarily embrace the fact that Washington, D.C., has all the answers. We want to be able to do it ourselves in ways that we think make sense for Alabama. And in fact, the governor’s plan demonstrates that.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the Alabama attorney general, as we wrap up, Andrew Jarecki.

ANDREW JARECKI: Yeah, I mean, that experience of talking to him was just remarkable, because he’s — it’s a kind of government speak that is devoid of the humanity of it, right? Whether he’s visited the Alabama prisons or not, sort of irrelevant. He is the person that’s running the justice system in that state, and he obviously doesn’t believe that there’s a problem.

AMY GOODMAN: Thirty seconds. Solitary confinement, who’s in, who’s out right now?

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: So, Melvin Ray has been released. Robert Earl Council and Raoul Poole are still in. And what I would just say is we made this film over seven years, but the issue in Alabama’s prison is still very urgent and very current. Since 2019, 1,500 people have died. And as you can see, they are threatened by voices that speak up. They are an authoritarian power that wants to quell dissent. That is what some of the people in our film are dealing with right now. And so, I hope that people will watch. Go to our website. There are ways to take action.

AMY GOODMAN: The website?

CHARLOTTE KAUFMAN: Is www.TheAlabamaSolution.com.

AMY GOODMAN: Charlotte Kaufman and Andrew Jarecki, co-directors of the Oscar-nominated Alabama Solution. Attorney Tiffany Johnson Cole, joining us from Alabama. Thank you so much for this incredible, epic work. I’m Amy Goodman.