Three activists — Robert Earl Council, Melvin Ray and Raoul Poole — featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary The Alabama Solution were placed in solitary confinement last month in what advocates believe is retaliation for their role in exposing the abuses of the state’s prison system and for helping to organize a prison labor strike. We’re joined by three guests who worked on the documentary: director Andrew Jarecki, investigative journalist Charlotte Kaufman and Tiffany Johnson Cole, a childhood friend of and attorney for Robert Earl Council. Johnson Cole has filed a lawsuit against her client’s transfer. She says Council, Ray, Poole and other incarcerated activists have “put themselves in harm’s way in an effort to bring about change in a system that is truly cruel and inhumane.”
The Alabama Solution features footage clandestinely shot on contraband cellphones wielded by men incarcerated by the fifth-largest state prison system in the United States. The footage includes the apparent cover-up of the beating death of an incarcerated man by prison guards. “Any authoritarian administration does not want you to see what’s going on inside,” says director Andrew Jarecki. “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.” Kaufman adds that the problem extends throughout 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 the system is fulfilling its mandate.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.