“The Alabama Solution” Highlights Struggle to Find Truth Behind Bars

“I would just like to know how. I would just like to know why.” These words, spoken by Brandon Davis shortly after the death of his brother Steven in an Alabama prison, capture the hunger for knowledge felt by many whose loved ones die behind bars. Several hours later, Davis’s family gathers around a TV as they watch a local newscast announce that Davis was killed after he allegedly attacked correctional officers. This is the first time Davis’s loved ones are hearing any details about his death. “Why are you finding this out now on the news after everyone else?”, one of Davis’s relatives asks in disbelief.

This scene forms the heart of the new HBO documentary *The Alabama Solution*, which combines contraband cellphone video footage filmed inside Alabama prisons with investigative reporting and professional documentary filmmaking to paint a grim portrait of life and death behind bars in Alabama. The efforts of Davis’s loved ones to find the truth about what really led to his death play out in parallel with efforts by people incarcerated in Alabama prisons to organize and spread the word about the inhumane conditions they face.

An Alabama Problem

A multi-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice culminated in a blistering 2019 report  documenting countless ways that conditions in Alabama prisons violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The DOJ sued the Alabama Department of Corrections the following year under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA), alleging the state failed to address the violations highlighted in the DOJ’s report.

The film’s opening scenes illustrate the DOJ’s findings in stark detail. In grainy cellphone footage, viewers see crowded dorms with more men than rickety bunks. Many sleep on dirty mattresses on the floor next to puddles of fetid water. Old ceiling fans turning lazily in the summer heat are the only source of cooling available; most ADOC facilities lack air-conditioning in a state notorious for its hot and humid summers.

The conditions in solitary confinement units appear even more dire. One man sent to solitary for his role organizing a statewide prison labor strike in 2022 complains that guards have disciplined him for storing his food in a bag hanging from the cell door. If he doesn’t hang his food, he says, “the little guys” will get them. The camera then pans down to show plastic water bottles that he has converted into mouse traps, each filled with three or more live mice trying to escape.

The documentary's title refers to Alabama Governor Kay Ivey’s response to the DOJ’s investigation in 2019. Ivey, who opposed DOJ oversight of the Alabama Department of Correction (ADOC), insisted that she would ensure “this Alabama problem has an Alabama solution.” Ivey’s solution was a $1.25 billion mega-prison, the “Governor Kay Ivey Correctional Complex,” which will hold at least 4,000 prisoners upon its completion, planned for next year. The state plans to build a second 4,000-bed facility, but the project has been stalled by a lack of funds.

“More body bags leaving out of ADOC than people on parole”

Alabama has one of the deadliest prison systems in the country. The UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project has been collecting data on deaths in custody for every prison system in the country. Among the state prison systems for which we have data, Alabama’s has had the highest mortality rate for four of the past six years— 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024. And it’s been getting worse: Between 2019 and 2024, the number of deaths in Alabama prisons more than doubled, rising from 130 in 2019 to 277 last year. Data we collected from the Alabama Department of Corrections shows that the increase stemmed largely from spikes in the number of overdose deaths and deaths from natural causes.

At the same time, parole rates have plummeted. In fiscal year 2018, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole granted parole in 53 percent of all hearings. Five years later, the Board  granted parole in only 8 percent of cases.

As a result, by fiscal year 2023, when deaths were at their highest and parole rates at their lowest, 342 people died in ADOC custody, but only 312 left on parole. As Robert Earl Council, one of the incarcerated men at the center of the film, put it: “There are more body bags leaving out of ADOC than people on parole.”

Controlling the Narrative

It’s not a spoiler to say that the film has no happy ending. Alabama prisons are deadlier today than they were when the documentary began production in 2019. The DOJ lawsuit remains mired in the federal courts, nearly a decade after the DOJ first opened its investigation. Even as the state pours billions into building new facilities, the system remains above 170 percent capacity.

And although deaths in Alabama prisons are at or near historic highs, in 2024, the ADOC stopped authorizing autopsies in deaths suspected to be caused by overdoses or natural causes. The state has also blocked family members of deceased prisoners from receiving their autopsy reports. A report published earlier this year by the ACLU of Alabama and the national ACLU called the ADOC “the Death (and carceral) Capital of the World,” citing the state’s failure to restrict contraband drugs brought into facilities by correctional officers as a major driver of increased mortality over the past five years. The report calls on state lawmakers to require ADOC to perform autopsies for all in-custody deaths, and to provide monthly and annual reporting on deaths in Alabama prisons.

“As long as ADOC has control of the narrative, this society is never going to understand or believe what’s really going on inside,” Council says in the documentary. Genuine understanding of the sort Council calls for requires collective recognition of basic, incontrovertible facts concerning the daily reality behind bars. And to make such recognition possible, we need ways of exposing those facts—whether through  federal oversight,  gathering and analyzing data from prisons and jails across the country, as we do, or making powerful documentary films like this one. Anyone wanting to join the conversation about how to fix the American prison system should start by watching *The Alabama Solution*.