By Tihut Tamrat, Voice & Viewpoint Staff Writer
The complete and total censorship of media brought on by the Alabama Department of Corrections denied journalists access to film inside Easterling Correctional Facility in Barbour County, Alabama. Directors Andrew Jericho and Charlotte Kaufman were forced to rethink their approach. What began as a blocked reporting effort became a six-year investigation into the realities of Alabama’s prison system. Unable to rely on official access, the filmmakers turned to real footage captured by incarcerated men themselves. The opening moments of The Alabama Solution are built from contraband cell phone videos, whispered testimonies recorded in secret, visible injuries, and frantic scenes from overcrowded dorms. Beneath those moments, a powerful score slowly emerges, aimed not to dramatize the suffering but to bear witness to it.
In 2019 and 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that Alabama fails to provide safe conditions, with high levels of violence and homicide. A July 2020 report detailed the use of force by correctional officers, including deadly force, against incarcerated people. The DOJ sued Alabama in December 2020 for failing to correct these issues. As of 2025, the death rate in Alabama prisons has doubled since the initial 2019 report, and the state has spent millions defending lawsuits over excessive force.
Over 1,300 inmates have died in Alabama prisons since April 2019, deaths reached a record high of at least 327 in 2023, with 277 deaths reported in 2024. Alabama now has the highest per capita prison mortality rate in the nation.
Mark Batson and Chris Hanebutt, composers of The Alabama Solution, known for their work in the Power Universe and collaborations with artists such as 50 Cent, Anthony Hamilton, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Mary J. Blige, to name a few, worked directly with the raw scenes of the film and sat down with the Voice & Viewpoint to share their reactions.
“These men are being disappeared,” Batson said. “They’re being transported into solitary confinement… buried under the ground someplace where they can’t communicate.”
He continues, “You’re seeing documents that are being falsified. It appears as if someone has died of pneumonia, but then when they do the autopsy, their bodies have all these bruises and broken bones, not reminiscent of pneumonia, this is something that’s not supposed to be happening in America and needs to be addressed. Prisons in Alabama have become black sites that reporters can’t go into, where these murders are being committed by the people in charge, and no one is allowed to see it.”
Deaths documented in the film occurred months and sometimes weeks apart, according to activists associated with the Free Alabama Movement, an inmate-led human rights organization using hunger strikes, work stoppages, and public advocacy campaigns to challenge mass incarceration, prison labor exploitation, and inhumane conditions within the Alabama Department of Corrections. Organizers and housed inmates featured in the film, Robert Earl Council (known as Kinetik Justice in the film), Melvin Ray, and Raoul Poole have reportedly been transferred in and out of solitary confinement since the documentary’s release (last transfer known, to Kilby Correctional Facility in Mt. Meigs on January 13, 2026).
The crisis is still unfolding inside Alabama state prisons, and has been since the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865: abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a convicted crime. The punishment exception allows involuntary servitude for those duly convicted of a crime as it allows for forced, unpaid labor within the prison system. Today, we still see that involuntary servitude is deeply embedded in the American system through the racialization and criminalization of Black people. Batson stands firm, “This is an American problem. It’s not a Black problem.”
Governor Kay Ivey has championed what she calls “the Alabama solution” to combat high death rates in the Alabama prison system: a plan to build new mega-prisons and increase security. Following the film’s Oscar nomination, Ivey issued her first public statement defending her approach and describing herself as one of the most respected prison reform leaders in the country.
Governor Kay Ivey’s press secretary released a statement saying, “We already knew the Oscars had a low bar, but as far as corrections goes, there has never been an Alabama governor more dedicated to solving the longstanding challenges facing the system than Governor Ivey. From recruiting a record number of corrections officers to doing sentencing reforms to constructing needed, new facilities, Governor Ivey is getting the job done and making it safer for inmates, officers and the public alike.”
Batson does not sugarcoat his response. “There’s a certain amount of Governor Ivey’s response that is destructively obtuse to witnessing modern slavery,” he said. “There is a point where it becomes not punishment but barbarism.”
Hanebutt was also not remiss to share his thoughts, “I mean she’s ridiculous, the comments that she’s making about it, and ‘the Alabama solution’, that she has come up with, is just the same thing on steroids, while pulling money from children’s education just to pump it into the system.”
When Hanebutt first saw the rough cut, he was stunned. “The first reactions were shock,” he said. “It’s just impossible to ignore the atrocities.”
The composers were intentional with no emotional manipulation. “Our task was to stay out of the way,” Hanebutt said. “You don’t want anybody to miss anything, because there’s so much information being shared.”
Rather than lean into blues or gospel tropes often associated with Southern prison narratives, Batson pushed for something different. “There’s a kind of blues cliché or gospel cliché that comes with these types of films,” he said. “We decided that this movie would have music that felt more Americana, because this is an American problem.”
The challenge was also technical. The film had been shaped over six years before the composers entered. “The mark was already set pretty high,” Batson said. “The most awesome skill of a creative is the ability to pivot.”
For both men, the score was an act of necessity. “The goal was to tell the story of these brave men… For us to pivot and try different music was nothing compared to what they have suffered,” Batson said.
More About Mark Batson and Chris Hanebutt
Batson’s connection to the project runs deep. Raised in New York in a household steeped in Black history, influenced by scholars like John Henrik Clarke — he grew up reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. His mother, he notes, picked cotton in the South as the daughter of a sharecropper.
“At the core of what I do is to find myself in places that augment my history, so that I can bring those projects back to my family and share them with pride,” he said. “Alabama Solution definitely allowed me to do that.”
Hanebutt, who grew up in the South and was in and out of jail as a young man, sees the issue as painfully close. “I’m unbelievably lucky to be here,” he said. “There are other people still in prison for making the exact same decisions. People don’t realize how easy it is to make a bad decision, when you’re in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong people it’s not hard. We’re not better, we can all be there.”
When the film earned an Oscar nomination, Batson’s reaction was not celebration. “The first feeling I felt was, wow — these men are still suffering in the same way.” Instead of cheering, he began calling prisons to locate the men featured in the film and wrote to Governor Ivey. “It just made me even more convinced to stand up to fight for them.”
Hanebutt describes the recognition as “bittersweet.” The silver lining, he says, is visibility. “There needs to be accountability. There needs to be transparency.”
The Movement continues
The Free Alabama Movement (FAM) remains active today. Organizers continue to advocate for sentencing reform, humane conditions, and independent oversight. According to Batson, updates and calls to action can be found at the film’s website and through FAM’s channels.
“If it’s 1,000 people in Alabama,” Batson said, “then it’s 1,000 people in Mississippi, and 1,000 in Louisiana. This brutal story… is the story of thousands and thousands of Americans.”
The documentary does not end with resolution. There is no triumphant swell of strings. The score lingers, unresolved.
For Batson and Hanebutt, that restraint is intentional. The music does not tell viewers what to feel. It insists they pay attention.
“This is an American story,” Batson said. “And now that it’s Oscar-nominated… it has to be heard.”
The fight for accountability is not over. The cameras may have captured the truth. The question now is whether the country is ready to respond.
Visit www.alabamasolution.com to write a letter to ADOC and the prison oversight committee. Take action, and let your voice be heard.