In his new, Oscar-shortlisted “The Alabama Solution”, which he co-directed with Charlotte Kaufman, Andrew Jarecki ("Capturing the Friedmans", "The Jinx") focusses on inmates of the Alabama Department of Corrections who use contraband phones to organize dissent within the system, even sustained labor strikes, all aimed at improving the dramatically overcrowded, squalid, abusive, and even fatal conditions within the state’s 14 prisons.

To date, Alabama’s “solution” to these problems–and the attention it has drawn from the Federal DOJ– has been to build larger prisons that promise to provide no increase in the system’s number of beds, but do promise with their massive financial overruns to feather the beds of the governor’s friends and supporters.  Jarecki and Kaufman, in league with the prisoners they depict here, hope to change that.

You can watch “The Alabama Solution” on HBO Max.

Follow:

@andrew.jarecki on Instagram

@topdocspod on Instagram and twitter/X

The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.