From The Creator Of ‘The Jinx’ Comes Shocking Expose Of Alabama Prison Conditions: “The System Is Really In Free Fall” – Sundance

deadline.com:

The pulverized face of Steven Davis tells a terrifying story of conditions inside Alabama state prisons – his eyes swollen shut, his bruised flesh a deep purple. “They beat him so badly his head was misshapen,” his mother, Sandy Ray, said at the time. “He looked like an alien.” The “they” she referred to are prison guards at the William E.

Donaldson Correctional Facility in Jefferson County, AL. Guards claimed Davis came at them with makeshift weapons, but that account is very much called into question in the documentary The Alabama Solution, directed by Emmy winner Andrew Jarecki (The Jinx parts 1 and 2, Capturing the Friedmans) and Charlotte Kaufman (The Jinx part 2).

The film, which is expected to air on HBO later this year, just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. “The prisons have been allowed to run essentially unmonitored,” Jarecki tells Deadline. “You have a prison camp where there may be 1,400 [inmates] living, maybe the prison is already 180 or 200 percent over capacity, so it’s insanely overburdened.

And then the fact that there’s so little oversight means that the men are in constant fear that they’re going to be abused in some form.” Jarecki continues, “There is no control over the behavior of guards or over the ability to provide any kind of basic level of humane treatment for people who are mentally ill or people who are troubled or just people who are vulnerable because it’s an environment where resources are so scarce.” The documentary project began with an invitation to the filmmakers to attend an open-air barbecue and revival meeting held annually at some Alabama state prisons, including the Easterling Correctional Facility in Clio.