‘The Alabama Solution’ review: Secret prison footage is harrowing

Indictments of our dehumanizing prison system don’t get much more conscience-piercing than what’s revealed in “The Alabama Solution,” a shattering documentary from Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman that feels like a dispatch from hell, specifically the 14 penitentiaries that make up the Heart of Dixie’s unchecked continuation of slave conditions.

Not that these co-directors could take their cameras inside the country’s most notorious state carceral system to film wretched conditions: overcrowding, understaffing, abuse, death and untreated addiction. (As one prisoner acutely observes, a reporter getting into a war zone is easier.) After receiving permission in 2019 to film a deceptively pleasant outdoor barbecue in an Alabama prison yard, Jarecki and Kaufman were connected to a secret network of activist inmates with contraband cellphones who’d been documenting their world at deadly risk.

In its foregrounding of the prisoners’ own communications, “The Alabama Solution” is a unique collaboration between outside and inside, an investigation conducted away from a secretive administration’s controlling eyes. The perspective is anchored in grainy, often hard-to-stomach guerrilla phone footage: violence, blood, rats, sickness, bodies wheeled out after incidents that won’t get reported and illuminating testimonials from longtimers like Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council (a.k.a. “Kinetik Justice”). Rigorously self-educated about the law and routinely targeted by guards, these inspiring subjects have stayed dedicated to nonviolent reform.

They’ve also watched the state’s prison system get labeled unconstitutional by the U.S. government, which petitioned Alabama for sweeping changes in 2020. The only results were brutal retaliation within the walls and callous apathy from state officials. The title is a grim irony, a reference to barely chastened right-wing Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s ridiculous proposal to stave off a federal takeover: build more prisons (and line contractors’ pockets). Meanwhile, since the lawsuit’s filing, as we learn, a thousand have died under the Alabama Department of Corrections. (Another mockery, that word “corrections.”)

The documentary shows us what’s really happening, tracking one horrific example of what administrators get away with. Early on, the filmmakers are tipped off to the severe beating of an inmate at the hands of a corrections officer, a scoop that allows them to inform the man’s family and rush to the hospital to investigate. What follows, from secret photos to lawyer calls to the halls of power, is nothing short of an odyssey of obfuscation, intimidation and corruption, proof that the nightmare of Alabama’s prison system isn’t reserved for those behind bars — it extends to a grieving family denied any answers about what looks like a murder.

We also see a collective resistance: a statewide prisoner strike in 2022 that tries to call attention to a free-labor boondoggle that can only be called modern slavery. Videos of the men inside holding hands and singing are among the film’s few heartwarming moments. One wonders about a supposedly rehabilitative penal system that refuses to foster that kind of hope, that only pulverizes, exploits and, to cover its misdeeds, deletes.

The movie, its many strands brilliantly threaded for maximum impact, is also an argument for the necessity of independent inquiry, and for a reassessment of what a “true crime” documentary means when the lion’s share of attention goes to sensationalized, overreported tabloid tales that go down easy in streaming formats. Made over years, “The Alabama Solution” is vital reporting about a serious human rights issue that extends beyond one state’s pointed cruelty. It’s designed to push us into less-tapped areas of empathy for a forgotten class of citizens who are willing to imperil their lives for something more than mere survival.

Indictments of our dehumanizing prison system don’t get much more conscience-piercing than what’s revealed in “The Alabama Solution,” a shattering documentary from Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman that feels like a dispatch from hell, specifically the 14 penitentiaries that make up the Heart of Dixie’s unchecked continuation of slave conditions.

Not that these co-directors could take their cameras inside the country’s most notorious state carceral system to film wretched conditions: overcrowding, understaffing, abuse, death and untreated addiction. (As one prisoner acutely observes, a reporter getting into a war zone is easier.) After receiving permission in 2019 to film a deceptively pleasant outdoor barbecue in an Alabama prison yard, Jarecki and Kaufman were connected to a secret network of activist inmates with contraband cellphones who’d been documenting their world at deadly risk.

In its foregrounding of the prisoners’ own communications, “The Alabama Solution” is a unique collaboration between outside and inside, an investigation conducted away from a secretive administration’s controlling eyes. The perspective is anchored in grainy, often hard-to-stomach guerrilla phone footage: violence, blood, rats, sickness, bodies wheeled out after incidents that won’t get reported and illuminating testimonials from longtimers like Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council (a.k.a. “Kinetik Justice”). Rigorously self-educated about the law and routinely targeted by guards, these inspiring subjects have stayed dedicated to nonviolent reform.

They’ve also watched the state’s prison system get labeled unconstitutional by the U.S. government, which petitioned Alabama for sweeping changes in 2020. The only results were brutal retaliation within the walls and callous apathy from state officials. The title is a grim irony, a reference to barely chastened right-wing Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s ridiculous proposal to stave off a federal takeover: build more prisons (and line contractors’ pockets). Meanwhile, since the lawsuit’s filing, as we learn, a thousand have died under the Alabama Department of Corrections. (Another mockery, that word “corrections.”)

The documentary shows us what’s really happening, tracking one horrific example of what administrators get away with. Early on, the filmmakers are tipped off to the severe beating of an inmate at the hands of a corrections officer, a scoop that allows them to inform the man’s family and rush to the hospital to investigate. What follows, from secret photos to lawyer calls to the halls of power, is nothing short of an odyssey of obfuscation, intimidation and corruption, proof that the nightmare of Alabama’s prison system isn’t reserved for those behind bars — it extends to a grieving family denied any answers about what looks like a murder.

We also see a collective resistance: a statewide prisoner strike in 2022 that tries to call attention to a free-labor boondoggle that can only be called modern slavery. Videos of the men inside holding hands and singing are among the film’s few heartwarming moments. One wonders about a supposedly rehabilitative penal system that refuses to foster that kind of hope, that only pulverizes, exploits and, to cover its misdeeds, deletes.

The movie, its many strands brilliantly threaded for maximum impact, is also an argument for the necessity of independent inquiry, and for a reassessment of what a “true crime” documentary means when the lion’s share of attention goes to sensationalized, overreported tabloid tales that go down easy in streaming formats. Made over years, “The Alabama Solution” is vital reporting about a serious human rights issue that extends beyond one state’s pointed cruelty. It’s designed to push us into less-tapped areas of empathy for a forgotten class of citizens who are willing to imperil their lives for something more than mere survival.

Indictments of our dehumanizing prison system don’t get much more conscience-piercing than what’s revealed in “The Alabama Solution,” a shattering documentary from Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman that feels like a dispatch from hell, specifically the 14 penitentiaries that make up the Heart of Dixie’s unchecked continuation of slave conditions.

Not that these co-directors could take their cameras inside the country’s most notorious state carceral system to film wretched conditions: overcrowding, understaffing, abuse, death and untreated addiction. (As one prisoner acutely observes, a reporter getting into a war zone is easier.) After receiving permission in 2019 to film a deceptively pleasant outdoor barbecue in an Alabama prison yard, Jarecki and Kaufman were connected to a secret network of activist inmates with contraband cellphones who’d been documenting their world at deadly risk.

In its foregrounding of the prisoners’ own communications, “The Alabama Solution” is a unique collaboration between outside and inside, an investigation conducted away from a secretive administration’s controlling eyes. The perspective is anchored in grainy, often hard-to-stomach guerrilla phone footage: violence, blood, rats, sickness, bodies wheeled out after incidents that won’t get reported and illuminating testimonials from longtimers like Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council (a.k.a. “Kinetik Justice”). Rigorously self-educated about the law and routinely targeted by guards, these inspiring subjects have stayed dedicated to nonviolent reform.

They’ve also watched the state’s prison system get labeled unconstitutional by the U.S. government, which petitioned Alabama for sweeping changes in 2020. The only results were brutal retaliation within the walls and callous apathy from state officials. The title is a grim irony, a reference to barely chastened right-wing Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s ridiculous proposal to stave off a federal takeover: build more prisons (and line contractors’ pockets). Meanwhile, since the lawsuit’s filing, as we learn, a thousand have died under the Alabama Department of Corrections. (Another mockery, that word “corrections.”)

The documentary shows us what’s really happening, tracking one horrific example of what administrators get away with. Early on, the filmmakers are tipped off to the severe beating of an inmate at the hands of a corrections officer, a scoop that allows them to inform the man’s family and rush to the hospital to investigate. What follows, from secret photos to lawyer calls to the halls of power, is nothing short of an odyssey of obfuscation, intimidation and corruption, proof that the nightmare of Alabama’s prison system isn’t reserved for those behind bars — it extends to a grieving family denied any answers about what looks like a murder.

We also see a collective resistance: a statewide prisoner strike in 2022 that tries to call attention to a free-labor boondoggle that can only be called modern slavery. Videos of the men inside holding hands and singing are among the film’s few heartwarming moments. One wonders about a supposedly rehabilitative penal system that refuses to foster that kind of hope, that only pulverizes, exploits and, to cover its misdeeds, deletes.

The movie, its many strands brilliantly threaded for maximum impact, is also an argument for the necessity of independent inquiry, and for a reassessment of what a “true crime” documentary means when the lion’s share of attention goes to sensationalized, overreported tabloid tales that go down easy in streaming formats. Made over years, “The Alabama Solution” is vital reporting about a serious human rights issue that extends beyond one state’s pointed cruelty. It’s designed to push us into less-tapped areas of empathy for a forgotten class of citizens who are willing to imperil their lives for something more than mere survival.

Indictments of our dehumanizing prison system don’t get much more conscience-piercing than what’s revealed in “The Alabama Solution,” a shattering documentary from Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman that feels like a dispatch from hell, specifically the 14 penitentiaries that make up the Heart of Dixie’s unchecked continuation of slave conditions.

Not that these co-directors could take their cameras inside the country’s most notorious state carceral system to film wretched conditions: overcrowding, understaffing, abuse, death and untreated addiction. (As one prisoner acutely observes, a reporter getting into a war zone is easier.) After receiving permission in 2019 to film a deceptively pleasant outdoor barbecue in an Alabama prison yard, Jarecki and Kaufman were connected to a secret network of activist inmates with contraband cellphones who’d been documenting their world at deadly risk.

In its foregrounding of the prisoners’ own communications, “The Alabama Solution” is a unique collaboration between outside and inside, an investigation conducted away from a secretive administration’s controlling eyes. The perspective is anchored in grainy, often hard-to-stomach guerrilla phone footage: violence, blood, rats, sickness, bodies wheeled out after incidents that won’t get reported and illuminating testimonials from longtimers like Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council (a.k.a. “Kinetik Justice”). Rigorously self-educated about the law and routinely targeted by guards, these inspiring subjects have stayed dedicated to nonviolent reform.

They’ve also watched the state’s prison system get labeled unconstitutional by the U.S. government, which petitioned Alabama for sweeping changes in 2020. The only results were brutal retaliation within the walls and callous apathy from state officials. The title is a grim irony, a reference to barely chastened right-wing Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s ridiculous proposal to stave off a federal takeover: build more prisons (and line contractors’ pockets). Meanwhile, since the lawsuit’s filing, as we learn, a thousand have died under the Alabama Department of Corrections. (Another mockery, that word “corrections.”)

The documentary shows us what’s really happening, tracking one horrific example of what administrators get away with. Early on, the filmmakers are tipped off to the severe beating of an inmate at the hands of a corrections officer, a scoop that allows them to inform the man’s family and rush to the hospital to investigate. What follows, from secret photos to lawyer calls to the halls of power, is nothing short of an odyssey of obfuscation, intimidation and corruption, proof that the nightmare of Alabama’s prison system isn’t reserved for those behind bars — it extends to a grieving family denied any answers about what looks like a murder.

We also see a collective resistance: a statewide prisoner strike in 2022 that tries to call attention to a free-labor boondoggle that can only be called modern slavery. Videos of the men inside holding hands and singing are among the film’s few heartwarming moments. One wonders about a supposedly rehabilitative penal system that refuses to foster that kind of hope, that only pulverizes, exploits and, to cover its misdeeds, deletes.

The movie, its many strands brilliantly threaded for maximum impact, is also an argument for the necessity of independent inquiry, and for a reassessment of what a “true crime” documentary means when the lion’s share of attention goes to sensationalized, overreported tabloid tales that go down easy in streaming formats. Made over years, “The Alabama Solution” is vital reporting about a serious human rights issue that extends beyond one state’s pointed cruelty. It’s designed to push us into less-tapped areas of empathy for a forgotten class of citizens who are willing to imperil their lives for something more than mere survival.

Indictments of our dehumanizing prison system don’t get much more conscience-piercing than what’s revealed in “The Alabama Solution,” a shattering documentary from Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman that feels like a dispatch from hell, specifically the 14 penitentiaries that make up the Heart of Dixie’s unchecked continuation of slave conditions.

Not that these co-directors could take their cameras inside the country’s most notorious state carceral system to film wretched conditions: overcrowding, understaffing, abuse, death and untreated addiction. (As one prisoner acutely observes, a reporter getting into a war zone is easier.) After receiving permission in 2019 to film a deceptively pleasant outdoor barbecue in an Alabama prison yard, Jarecki and Kaufman were connected to a secret network of activist inmates with contraband cellphones who’d been documenting their world at deadly risk.

In its foregrounding of the prisoners’ own communications, “The Alabama Solution” is a unique collaboration between outside and inside, an investigation conducted away from a secretive administration’s controlling eyes. The perspective is anchored in grainy, often hard-to-stomach guerrilla phone footage: violence, blood, rats, sickness, bodies wheeled out after incidents that won’t get reported and illuminating testimonials from longtimers like Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council (a.k.a. “Kinetik Justice”). Rigorously self-educated about the law and routinely targeted by guards, these inspiring subjects have stayed dedicated to nonviolent reform.

They’ve also watched the state’s prison system get labeled unconstitutional by the U.S. government, which petitioned Alabama for sweeping changes in 2020. The only results were brutal retaliation within the walls and callous apathy from state officials. The title is a grim irony, a reference to barely chastened right-wing Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s ridiculous proposal to stave off a federal takeover: build more prisons (and line contractors’ pockets). Meanwhile, since the lawsuit’s filing, as we learn, a thousand have died under the Alabama Department of Corrections. (Another mockery, that word “corrections.”)

The documentary shows us what’s really happening, tracking one horrific example of what administrators get away with. Early on, the filmmakers are tipped off to the severe beating of an inmate at the hands of a corrections officer, a scoop that allows them to inform the man’s family and rush to the hospital to investigate. What follows, from secret photos to lawyer calls to the halls of power, is nothing short of an odyssey of obfuscation, intimidation and corruption, proof that the nightmare of Alabama’s prison system isn’t reserved for those behind bars — it extends to a grieving family denied any answers about what looks like a murder.

We also see a collective resistance: a statewide prisoner strike in 2022 that tries to call attention to a free-labor boondoggle that can only be called modern slavery. Videos of the men inside holding hands and singing are among the film’s few heartwarming moments. One wonders about a supposedly rehabilitative penal system that refuses to foster that kind of hope, that only pulverizes, exploits and, to cover its misdeeds, deletes.

The movie, its many strands brilliantly threaded for maximum impact, is also an argument for the necessity of independent inquiry, and for a reassessment of what a “true crime” documentary means when the lion’s share of attention goes to sensationalized, overreported tabloid tales that go down easy in streaming formats. Made over years, “The Alabama Solution” is vital reporting about a serious human rights issue that extends beyond one state’s pointed cruelty. It’s designed to push us into less-tapped areas of empathy for a forgotten class of citizens who are willing to imperil their lives for something more than mere survival.

Indictments of our dehumanizing prison system don’t get much more conscience-piercing than what’s revealed in “The Alabama Solution,” a shattering documentary from Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman that feels like a dispatch from hell, specifically the 14 penitentiaries that make up the Heart of Dixie’s unchecked continuation of slave conditions.

Not that these co-directors could take their cameras inside the country’s most notorious state carceral system to film wretched conditions: overcrowding, understaffing, abuse, death and untreated addiction. (As one prisoner acutely observes, a reporter getting into a war zone is easier.) After receiving permission in 2019 to film a deceptively pleasant outdoor barbecue in an Alabama prison yard, Jarecki and Kaufman were connected to a secret network of activist inmates with contraband cellphones who’d been documenting their world at deadly risk.

In its foregrounding of the prisoners’ own communications, “The Alabama Solution” is a unique collaboration between outside and inside, an investigation conducted away from a secretive administration’s controlling eyes. The perspective is anchored in grainy, often hard-to-stomach guerrilla phone footage: violence, blood, rats, sickness, bodies wheeled out after incidents that won’t get reported and illuminating testimonials from longtimers like Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council (a.k.a. “Kinetik Justice”). Rigorously self-educated about the law and routinely targeted by guards, these inspiring subjects have stayed dedicated to nonviolent reform.

They’ve also watched the state’s prison system get labeled unconstitutional by the U.S. government, which petitioned Alabama for sweeping changes in 2020. The only results were brutal retaliation within the walls and callous apathy from state officials. The title is a grim irony, a reference to barely chastened right-wing Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s ridiculous proposal to stave off a federal takeover: build more prisons (and line contractors’ pockets). Meanwhile, since the lawsuit’s filing, as we learn, a thousand have died under the Alabama Department of Corrections. (Another mockery, that word “corrections.”)

The documentary shows us what’s really happening, tracking one horrific example of what administrators get away with. Early on, the filmmakers are tipped off to the severe beating of an inmate at the hands of a corrections officer, a scoop that allows them to inform the man’s family and rush to the hospital to investigate. What follows, from secret photos to lawyer calls to the halls of power, is nothing short of an odyssey of obfuscation, intimidation and corruption, proof that the nightmare of Alabama’s prison system isn’t reserved for those behind bars — it extends to a grieving family denied any answers about what looks like a murder.

We also see a collective resistance: a statewide prisoner strike in 2022 that tries to call attention to a free-labor boondoggle that can only be called modern slavery. Videos of the men inside holding hands and singing are among the film’s few heartwarming moments. One wonders about a supposedly rehabilitative penal system that refuses to foster that kind of hope, that only pulverizes, exploits and, to cover its misdeeds, deletes.

The movie, its many strands brilliantly threaded for maximum impact, is also an argument for the necessity of independent inquiry, and for a reassessment of what a “true crime” documentary means when the lion’s share of attention goes to sensationalized, overreported tabloid tales that go down easy in streaming formats. Made over years, “The Alabama Solution” is vital reporting about a serious human rights issue that extends beyond one state’s pointed cruelty. It’s designed to push us into less-tapped areas of empathy for a forgotten class of citizens who are willing to imperil their lives for something more than mere survival.

Indictments of our dehumanizing prison system don’t get much more conscience-piercing than what’s revealed in “The Alabama Solution,” a shattering documentary from Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman that feels like a dispatch from hell, specifically the 14 penitentiaries that make up the Heart of Dixie’s unchecked continuation of slave conditions.

Not that these co-directors could take their cameras inside the country’s most notorious state carceral system to film wretched conditions: overcrowding, understaffing, abuse, death and untreated addiction. (As one prisoner acutely observes, a reporter getting into a war zone is easier.) After receiving permission in 2019 to film a deceptively pleasant outdoor barbecue in an Alabama prison yard, Jarecki and Kaufman were connected to a secret network of activist inmates with contraband cellphones who’d been documenting their world at deadly risk.

In its foregrounding of the prisoners’ own communications, “The Alabama Solution” is a unique collaboration between outside and inside, an investigation conducted away from a secretive administration’s controlling eyes. The perspective is anchored in grainy, often hard-to-stomach guerrilla phone footage: violence, blood, rats, sickness, bodies wheeled out after incidents that won’t get reported and illuminating testimonials from longtimers like Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council (a.k.a. “Kinetik Justice”). Rigorously self-educated about the law and routinely targeted by guards, these inspiring subjects have stayed dedicated to nonviolent reform.

They’ve also watched the state’s prison system get labeled unconstitutional by the U.S. government, which petitioned Alabama for sweeping changes in 2020. The only results were brutal retaliation within the walls and callous apathy from state officials. The title is a grim irony, a reference to barely chastened right-wing Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s ridiculous proposal to stave off a federal takeover: build more prisons (and line contractors’ pockets). Meanwhile, since the lawsuit’s filing, as we learn, a thousand have died under the Alabama Department of Corrections. (Another mockery, that word “corrections.”)

The documentary shows us what’s really happening, tracking one horrific example of what administrators get away with. Early on, the filmmakers are tipped off to the severe beating of an inmate at the hands of a corrections officer, a scoop that allows them to inform the man’s family and rush to the hospital to investigate. What follows, from secret photos to lawyer calls to the halls of power, is nothing short of an odyssey of obfuscation, intimidation and corruption, proof that the nightmare of Alabama’s prison system isn’t reserved for those behind bars — it extends to a grieving family denied any answers about what looks like a murder.

We also see a collective resistance: a statewide prisoner strike in 2022 that tries to call attention to a free-labor boondoggle that can only be called modern slavery. Videos of the men inside holding hands and singing are among the film’s few heartwarming moments. One wonders about a supposedly rehabilitative penal system that refuses to foster that kind of hope, that only pulverizes, exploits and, to cover its misdeeds, deletes.

The movie, its many strands brilliantly threaded for maximum impact, is also an argument for the necessity of independent inquiry, and for a reassessment of what a “true crime” documentary means when the lion’s share of attention goes to sensationalized, overreported tabloid tales that go down easy in streaming formats. Made over years, “The Alabama Solution” is vital reporting about a serious human rights issue that extends beyond one state’s pointed cruelty. It’s designed to push us into less-tapped areas of empathy for a forgotten class of citizens who are willing to imperil their lives for something more than mere survival.

Indictments of our dehumanizing prison system don’t get much more conscience-piercing than what’s revealed in “The Alabama Solution,” a shattering documentary from Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman that feels like a dispatch from hell, specifically the 14 penitentiaries that make up the Heart of Dixie’s unchecked continuation of slave conditions.

Not that these co-directors could take their cameras inside the country’s most notorious state carceral system to film wretched conditions: overcrowding, understaffing, abuse, death and untreated addiction. (As one prisoner acutely observes, a reporter getting into a war zone is easier.) After receiving permission in 2019 to film a deceptively pleasant outdoor barbecue in an Alabama prison yard, Jarecki and Kaufman were connected to a secret network of activist inmates with contraband cellphones who’d been documenting their world at deadly risk.

In its foregrounding of the prisoners’ own communications, “The Alabama Solution” is a unique collaboration between outside and inside, an investigation conducted away from a secretive administration’s controlling eyes. The perspective is anchored in grainy, often hard-to-stomach guerrilla phone footage: violence, blood, rats, sickness, bodies wheeled out after incidents that won’t get reported and illuminating testimonials from longtimers like Melvin Ray and Robert Earl Council (a.k.a. “Kinetik Justice”). Rigorously self-educated about the law and routinely targeted by guards, these inspiring subjects have stayed dedicated to nonviolent reform.

They’ve also watched the state’s prison system get labeled unconstitutional by the U.S. government, which petitioned Alabama for sweeping changes in 2020. The only results were brutal retaliation within the walls and callous apathy from state officials. The title is a grim irony, a reference to barely chastened right-wing Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s ridiculous proposal to stave off a federal takeover: build more prisons (and line contractors’ pockets). Meanwhile, since the lawsuit’s filing, as we learn, a thousand have died under the Alabama Department of Corrections. (Another mockery, that word “corrections.”)

The documentary shows us what’s really happening, tracking one horrific example of what administrators get away with. Early on, the filmmakers are tipped off to the severe beating of an inmate at the hands of a corrections officer, a scoop that allows them to inform the man’s family and rush to the hospital to investigate. What follows, from secret photos to lawyer calls to the halls of power, is nothing short of an odyssey of obfuscation, intimidation and corruption, proof that the nightmare of Alabama’s prison system isn’t reserved for those behind bars — it extends to a grieving family denied any answers about what looks like a murder.

We also see a collective resistance: a statewide prisoner strike in 2022 that tries to call attention to a free-labor boondoggle that can only be called modern slavery. Videos of the men inside holding hands and singing are among the film’s few heartwarming moments. One wonders about a supposedly rehabilitative penal system that refuses to foster that kind of hope, that only pulverizes, exploits and, to cover its misdeeds, deletes.

The movie, its many strands brilliantly threaded for maximum impact, is also an argument for the necessity of independent inquiry, and for a reassessment of what a “true crime” documentary means when the lion’s share of attention goes to sensationalized, overreported tabloid tales that go down easy in streaming formats. Made over years, “The Alabama Solution” is vital reporting about a serious human rights issue that extends beyond one state’s pointed cruelty. It’s designed to push us into less-tapped areas of empathy for a forgotten class of citizens who are willing to imperil their lives for something more than mere survival.