My Substantial Praises and Minor Criticisms of the HBO Documentary “The Alabama Solution”

I’ve been asked by multiple readers (which is a lot for me) if I have watched the recently released HBO documentary The Alabama Solution, and if so, what I think about it.

Perhaps because I have been doing this work in a considerably lonely and underfunded manner for about 16 years, starting too young, sticking with it maybe because I’m slightly insane, and perhaps because none of my work was included in the documentary, I think my small subset of readers might expect me to have a much edgier take on the film than I do.

At first, I didn’t want to watch the documentary, at least for a while. I’ve been extremely steeped in my workaholism for the last year. My work is relatively painful, as you might imagine. I didn’t think attaching vivid images of the horrifying world with which I’d been constantly preoccupied for so long would be good for me.

And between you and me, my life has been kind of fucked up for a couple of months, quite apart from prison issues, beginning roughly around the time the documentary came out, so I didn’t think watching it would be great for that reason as well.

But, after a few days, with the encouragement of others, I changed my mind and watched it. So, to those of you who have asked: Yes, I watched it, and it was beautifully, masterfully done.

Especially since I don’t live in Alabama, my work has often felt very lonely. The journalist Eddie Burkhalter has become a good friend and mentor long distance. Beth Shelburne, who worked on the documentary, has also been very helpful to me at times. Despite being very busy, she has been very encouraging at crucial stages in my work. She was particularly kind and encouraging when I reached out when I finished my book on Bullock Prison and I didn’t know what to do with it.

I am forever grateful to my loved ones who have been in my life through this work. Still, the work has felt lonely for most of the years doing it.

The reason I was hesitant to watch the documentary was that I knew it would be very good. And it was very good. I’m biased by being obsessed with the topic, but I found it breathtaking.

That’s why I didn’t plan to write anything about it. What more need be said? It speaks so well for itself. I felt an enormous sense of relief after watching it, relief that people, prisoners and journalists alike, whose work I trust, were able to get this lonely, underreported story onto a major network, with a project so beautifully done.

I knew before watching that I was going to break at some point, and I broke a few times. The moment that broke me most is after prisoner/activist Kinetic Justice, a hero of nonviolent action, is beaten nearly to death by guards, survives, comes out of it considering whether nonviolence is working tactically or whether it will take “a whole lot of bloodshed” to make a change, wrestles with that, then continues to relentlessly advocate a nonviolent strategy when he is able to reconvene with the other prisoners again, which precedes the nonviolent work stoppage by the prisoners. This moment filled me with tears of inspiration, grateful that a hero like this is living in the same dark times as the rest of us.

I don’t want to single out Kinetic or anyone else, in the documentary or not, but his story, and his work and his leadership, illustrate the extent to which the prisoners taking action and speaking out in this struggle are the real civil rights leaders and American heroes of our time.

So, I didn’t feel a real need to write about it. It spoke for itself. It was a relief to see it exist, and a relief that it was so good. Everyone should watch it.

But, just like I didn’t think I’d be able to watch it and then I did, I didn’t think I’d be able to write about it, and upon reflection, here I am.

I don’t have any major criticisms of the documentary. I do have a couple of thoughts that I think are useful coming from my perspective. They are simple and small criticisms. There are really just two of them. Given how well done the documentary is, the first note in particular is hardly even useful. There’s a strong argument that the documentary could have been created no other way, so it’s hardly a criticism at all.

However, I do think it should be acknowledged that the creation of The Alabama Solution, for very good and defensible reasons, was heavily reliant on contraband cell phone communication seemingly at the exclusion of other methods of communication.

This is not a knock on the movie at all. As a journalist covering prisons, I communicate with prisoners in any way they can. That includes contraband cell phones. When I meet prisoners with cell phones, those phones are extremely useful tools journalistically. I get it.

And also, you know, fuck the police.

So, I have no problem communicating with prisoners via cell phone as a journalist myself, or with other journalists doing that.

Indeed, a whole separate article could be written — and maybe I should write it at some point — about the logistics, ethics, and journalistic challenges of trying to communicate with prisoners in every way possible. But, for the purposes of reviewing this documentary, I’ll just say this:

As is acknowledged in the documentary, cell phones in the prisons are extremely expensive, costing well over 1,000 dollars as of this writing. I’ve been doing this work a long time. I find that when I am overly reliant on prisoners with cell phones, there are certain kinds of prisoners I encounter less:

Prisoners who are the poorest of the poor, prisoners who have the fewest family connections and the fewest connections to the free world generally, who are therefore the loneliest of the lonely, prisoners who are the oldest and/or have been in the longest, prisoners who are the least educated, who sometimes cannot read or write, to name some examples, are all least likely to have cell phones, and they have extremely important stories for journalists to cover, to be documented in history. They are as important for us to interview as anyone else.

The more exclusively you focus on prisoners with cell phones, the easier it is to miss people like that, those who are the worst off, who have the least, who have been suffering the very longest, who are the very loneliest, have seen as much or more than anyone and had the fewest opportunities to share anything they’ve seen with people in the free world.

My second minor criticism concerns what has apparently become a much talked about moment in the movie, in which the director Andrew Jarecki asks Attorney General Steve Marshall, “In your mind, can people be genuinely rehabilitated?”

I’ll spare you the bullshit salad of an answer and skip straight to the spoiler alert: Marshall does not answer, “Yes, I do.”

This moment marks my only real criticism of the movie, and it is another small criticism. Forgive me if this feels nit picky.

Allow me a short wind-up:

Perhaps I’m biased by a concern for the connotations that come with being a well-meaning white writer from the North, judging people of the South for their ways. I hear some of them are a little prickly about that sort of thing. And I do think it’s fair to recognize that I’m writing about a state in which many people have very different politics from my own, different perspectives, and I want them to be able to read and trust my work and my reporting without feeling condescended, judged, or told what to think. So, I’m less overtly political the longer I write, and I try to stick to the facts about the living conditions in the prisons as much as possible. I don’t get abstract these days. I don’t give my opinion a whole lot anymore. I try to write stories no one else has if I’m going to put pen to paper (which is also why I interview so many prisoners who will never have a cell phone).

So, here’s my little problem with this exchange between Jarecki and Marshall, having become less political in my work in recent years and more attentive to the fact that I want to reach people who disagree with me:

I suppose the question, “Do you believe in rehabilitation,” is fine, but it feels like there is a better question, or at the very least, a crucially missing follow-up question. The problem is that we already know these officials don’t believe in rehabilitation. Or, maybe more accurately, whether they believe that rehabilitation can exist or not is irrelevant to them. They knew what these prisons were like before the documentary came out. They are in favor of these hellish conditions. Whether they believe in rehabilitation misses the point. They don’t want to pursue rehabilitation even if rehabilitation is possible, so they don’t really care if it’s possible. Rehabilitation is not what matters to them. We already knew that.

As a Northern leftist, who tries to approach the research about Alabama as objectively as possible, sensitive to the fact that most people living there are probably of a different political persuasion than me and don’t want to be asked about restorative justice, and knowing that I really want to reach those people, I think there is a better question than “Do you believe in rehabilitation?”

The better question is: Even if you don’t believe in rehabilitation, do you believe that what’s happening in these prisons is the right model?

Even if you don’t think any of these people can be rehabilitated, and even if you think they should just stay in prison even if they do rehabilitate, do you think it is okay for them to be raped while they’re in there? Indeed, do you think it’s okay for anyone to be raped, anywhere?

Even if you don’t believe in rehabilitation, do you believe prisoners who have not been sentenced to death should be killed in prison, both by each other and by officers?

Even if you don’t believe in rehabilitation, do you think it is right and good for law enforcement officers to be participating in massive drug dealing operations in prisons? Even if you don’t believe prisoners can or should be rehabilitated, do you think they should be able to buy drugs from the officers?

Even if you don’t believe in rehabilitation, do you believe officers should be encouraging prisoners to kill themselves?

Even if you don’t believe in rehabilitation, do you believe the prisons should be so understaffed and overcrowded?

Even if you don’t believe in rehabilitation, do you believe officers should be falling asleep on the job, as has been caught on camera numerous times?

I know there is a vocal contingent of the public who hates prisoners enough that, sadly, many will support these things happening. Many will answer “yes” to these questions. Many people seem to believe that prisoners deserve whatever life or death they get once they are imprisoned.

But I do believe there must be a large number of even tough-on-crime conservatives who, without being pressured to have beliefs they will never have about “rehabilitation” or restorative justice, can still be convinced to oppose unpunished rape and murder and widespread drug dealing, to name a few features of Alabama’s system.

You don’t have to be a liberal or a lefty, or believe in rehabilitation or restorative justice practices, to oppose rape and widespread drug dealing.

The question for Steve Marshall is not, “Do you believe in rehabilitation for prisoners?” The proper question is, “Do you believe in constant lawless brutality and suffering in forms that no court sentenced any of these prisoners to endure?”

I don’t much care what Steve Marshall thinks deep in his heart about whether people can be rehabilitated. It doesn’t matter. Whether he thinks they can or not, he has plenty to answer for.

We already knew these fuckers don’t care about rehabilitation. They’re not even coy about this. Is literally anyone surprised that Steve Marshall did not answer, “Yeah, actually, I do”?

Here’s the thing: Not caring about rehabilitation is no excuse to preside over an institution of lawless brutality. Simply admitting you don’t care about rehabilitation doesn’t explain away or justify any of these practices.

Alabama prisons are rape, violence, and death factories. The Alabama Department of Corrections is a drug cartel.

Even if you don’t believe in rehabilitation, there’s plenty to answer for here.

And if you believe criminals are truly evil and irredeemable, why do you have so many of them working for you on the ADOC payroll? Why are you allowing so much criminal activity on your watch?

Mr. Marshall, perhaps the real criminal, the real evil that can’t be rehabilitated, is within. That kind of evil you purport to fear in the world, that evil that is so deeply rooted, so intractable, so dark that it can’t be changed, perhaps if you begin searching real hard and real seriously, someday, you will find that evil deep inside yourself.

If that happens, you will be welcomed with open arms by people who will be there to tell you: Yes, it is possible to be a better person than you have been. Yes, it is possible to stop being a criminal. And you can start trying any day now.

This piece first appeared on the Hard Times Reviewer.

The post My Substantial Praises and Minor Criticisms of the HBO Documentary “The Alabama Solution” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.