David Fuerst (3:58)

Charlotte, do you want to pick up the story from there? Because the event that Andrew's talking about is sort of a bit of a PR event. Right. This is an event where the media gets a little bit of access.

Charlotte Kaufman (4:11)

Yeah. I think it's a bright moment inside the facilities where someone from the outside is coming in to bring food and bring some hope and bring some humanity. And I think they're more willing to allow the public to see that moment than maybe what happens the rest of the days of the year and in all the places where that revival meeting wasn't happening.

David Fuerst (4:38)

So what happens, you hear. You hear a few comments from prisoners during this event, and that kind of sets this whole ball rolling, right?

Charlotte Kaufman (4:48)

Yeah. Well, when the guards aren't looking and when we have a moment to speak more confidentially, they tell us, what you're seeing today is not representative of our actual reality here. Horrible crimes are being committed and no one knows about it, and it's being swept under the rug.

Andrew Jarecki (5:09)

And.

Charlotte Kaufman (5:10)

And that really compelled us, after that visit to wanna keep investigating and understanding what was happening inside the Alabama prison system. And fortunately, we were able to stay in touch with some of those men because of the prevalence of cell phones in the Alabama prison system. Because usually you cannot communicate freely with people who are incarcerated because all communication is surveyed. It's limited to around, like, 15 minutes per con. That privilege of communication can be taken away from people very easily. There aren't that many protections for people who are incarcerated to continue to communicate with the outside world. So the fact that there were phones available inside the Alabama prison system allowed us to begin a dialogue that really set the stage for a deeper investigation than would otherwise be possible.

David Fuerst (6:07)

Andrew, talk more about these cell phones that are on the inside. This is contraband, right? These are not permitt inside the prison system?

Andrew Jarecki (6:15)

No. I mean, we were pretty shocked that there were so many cell phones Inside the prisons that everyone has, they don't all have a cell phone, but they have access to a cell phone or they share a charger with somebody that's kind of a jerry rigged charger. It's really become quite a large economy inside the prison and the prisons. And those cell phones are largely coming in from the guards. Right. They're not. You know, when I was asking one of the prisoners about why there are so many cell phones and. And so many drugs are coming in, because it's an enormous drug trade, and he looked at me sort of incredulously, and he said, you know, we don't leave. Right. And it really struck us that, that the whole system, in my opinion, is a criminal enterprise, really. You know, that the contraband trade is run by the insiders. And then you hear the government say, well, of course we know the bad people are inside, thankfully, and the good people are on the outside, and the administration is good and the residents are bad. But ultimately what we found was that when you don't have any kind of oversight over a system where people are allowed to have life or death control over each other, sometimes they kill each other, and often it's guards who are so, you know, to say that they're abusive to the prisoners is an understatement. There is a process of destroying the lives of the people inside. And the people who are charged with their care are often the ones who are responsible. And that's one of the stories that we discovered as we were going through the process of making the film, was that we heard about a suspicious death. And then we tracked it down, went to the hospital, followed through on it.

David Fuerst (8:10)

And Charlotte, just picking up the thread on the cell phones there a little more. It's fascinating that they're so prevalent because not only can prisoners communicate with you and record videos of things happening sometimes inside the prison system, they can also communicate with each other and organize.

Charlotte Kaufman (8:30)

Yeah, I think that's one of the most powerful parts of our film, and one of the most powerful things we were able to document was the organizing. Because, you know, when we came into the Alabama prison system in 2019, the Department of Justice had declared that the entire system was unconstitutional. And there was a brief moment of feeling, okay, there may be some. Some help from the federal government or from the outside world to correct this system in free fall. And over the, you know, six years that we made this film, unfortunately, that hope proved to not be realized. And the Department of Justice, though they filed a lawsuit, didn't. Did not act aggressively in the Courts and the help did not come. And I think the men sort of realized that no help was coming from the outside and they had to organize themselves and they led a, they have been leading a non violent movement to try to bring change. And what's remarkable about that is that it spreads across the 14 prison systems. And you know, everybody knows that in the state, the 14 prison systems in the state and they continue to be committed to nonviolent strategies like work stoppages and hunger strikes and boycotts, even though every time they try to do their activism, they're met with violence. So it's a pretty remarkable movement. And, and the, the thing also that's quite incredible about the leadership is prison. You know, it's an economy of deprivation. It's a power, it's a pressure cooker. And that often, you know, intensifies differences between, between people and to, and between groups. So the, the fact that they're able to kind of unite everybody is pretty remarkable to see.

David Fuerst (10:40)

We're speaking with the filmmakers Charlotte Kaufman and Andrew Jarecki about the new documentary the Alabama the Truth from the Inside Out. Andrew, a lot of your past work centers on some pretty harrowing situations. In 2003, you made a film about Arnold and Jesse Friedman who were convicted of child sexual abuse. You produced that docu series on Robert Durst. As you were working on the Alabama Solution, how were you thinking about the tools in your arsenal as far as telling this story?

Andrew Jarecki (11:18)

Well, the thing that we always try to do, and now Charlotte and I have had a lot of experience working together because we also did part two of the Jinx together, is that it's all about giving the material time. And that means understanding it over time. It means giving people time to express themselves when you're talking to them in an interview or otherwise. And ultimately, you know, documentary film is, is, is driven a lot by time compression. You know, that, that we are seeing something that takes place over years, but we're able to compress it into an hour and 52 minutes like this film. And I think the most important thing is sort of going into it without a clear picture of what you're going to find. And increasingly, I think, you know, there are a lot of companies and media companies out there that are saying, well, we need a documentary about XYZ salacious subject. It's got to be done by Thursday because the public's going to move on because they're only watching 8 seconds on Instagram to begin with. We got to grab their attention. And as a result, you end up with a lot of material that's just produced very quickly. And often the stuff that you learn very quickly is not the deep analysis that you can do in a documentary film. So we always try to go in without a clear picture. And we certainly didn't have a clear picture here because of the secrecy. Because when we asked to interview the Commissioner of Corrections, they refused. Because when we asked, you know, the governor doesn't give interviews. We did ultimately interview the attorney general, who's sort of in charge of the system, but it's just a matter of time and kind of just rope a doping over time. You gotta get to the point where people are either so exhausted that they're willing to talk to you, or you find another way in.

David Fuerst (13:13)

I wanna talk about some of the people that we meet in this film, Charlotte. This is really a documentary about the prison system, but the inmates that we follow and their personal stories, we feel a strong connection to them as follow them through the years and through this film. Why is it important that nonfiction has characters like these, like Robert Earle or Sandy Ray, the woman who is looking for answers surrounding her son's death at the hands of prison guards.

Charlotte Kaufman (13:45)

Well, one of the first conversations I had with Melvin Ray, I said, what does the media usually get wrong about the prison system? And he said that even media that is focusing on the need for reform or change, they still really reduce us, or they can reduce us to just data points and reduce us to only the circumstances of our environment. And while the circumstances of their environment are very important, you know, all of the corruption and the abuse and the crisis, they're also. So. There's also so much more to them as people. You know, they're leaders and fathers, and they've got spiritual things. Things to teach us. They've got philosophical things to teach us. And I think when you erase all of that, which the system does through its secrecy, through other mechanisms of sort of inhumane treatment, it's easier for the public to accept the. To accept how we're treating them. When you no longer can relate to the person as a individual, and their story sort of ends as soon as they enter the system. We can kind of accept this wholesale destruction that's happening in all our prisons across America. So bringing back the humanity and the growth and the nuance of these people is, I think, very important in terms of understanding the failures of this system.

David Fuerst (15:22)

Andrew, can you tell us more about Robert Earl? This is somebody. This is a prisoner who clearly spent a lot of time educating himself about legal issues and much more.

Andrew Jarecki (15:37)

Yeah, I mean, Robert Earle, who also goes by Kinetic justice, is, I would say, one of the smartest people I've ever met. And I think Charlotte feels the same way. If he were not incarcerated or had not been incarcerated for decades, he would be doing something extraordinary in the world. He's an unbelievable leader. He is the sort of the heart of the nonviolent effort. He has organizing skills. He has intellectual skills that allow him to sort of see beyond the instant indignities at the prison and say, well, where is this coming from? We learned a ton of. About why the prison system is the way it was and the way that it is from. From Robert Earl. And, you know, he. We see that he went to prison as a very young man. He came from a community where if you wanted to be successful, drugs were probably a good way to. To do it. And he was convicted of a crime of. Of murder. But in fact, it was clear that the person that he had shot was somebody who was trying to run him down with a car. And in any other situation, that would have been considered a stand your ground case. And it was clearly self defense. And yet you have somebody like that in prison, and there's the rolling experience of it getting worse and worse and worse and them coming up with more and more reasons to keep you inside. But he's an extraordinary, extraordinary leader.

Charlotte Kaufman (17:10)

You know, we had the feeling.

David Fuerst (17:10)

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Charlotte Kaufman (17:12)

Well, I was just going to say we had the feeling when we were making this film that we had the opportunity to document a civil rights movement that would otherwise be kept secret and a history that maybe would not be recorded. And I think that's very true. Throughout American history, there have been these leaders inside facilities, whether. I mean, but we just don't have access to them. So it felt very unique that we were able to follow along with Robert Earle and Melvin Ray and others as they tried to navigate the situation and figure out how to push back against authoritarian power.

David Fuerst (17:50)

Charlotte Kaufman and Andrew Jarecki, the filmmakers behind the new documentary the Alabama the Truth from the Inside Out. We'll continue this conversation in just a moment. This is all of it on wnyc. We're talking about the new documentary the Alabama the Truth from the Inside Out. We're speaking with filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman. Charlotte, if we want to see this documentary, what's the best way.

Charlotte Kaufman (18:26)

It's streaming on HBO right now.

David Fuerst (18:29)

So that's it streaming on hbo. Check it out. That's the best way to.

Charlotte Kaufman (18:33)

Yeah, we're also holding community screenings throughout Alabama oh, interesting.

David Fuerst (18:40)

I'm guessing no. No. I mean, no way this could be shown inside the prison system, I guess. Unless people are watching it on their cell phones.

Charlotte Kaufman (18:48)

Yeah, yeah.

David Fuerst (18:49)

Shrug is your people have been, you.

Andrew Jarecki (18:51)

Know, people are able to watch it on their cell phones and, and I think, you know, it's clearly something that the Department of Corrections hasn't been able to control. I think they would like to control it, but it's such a big part of the guards income that they get from contraband sales, you know, that there's a real black market there. Somebody said to me, well, the guards are making $36,000 a year without the cell phones and the drugs, and they're making closer to $70,000 a year with them. So it's going to be disruptive to have the guards stop selling drugs and other paraphernalia. But I think it's important to just point out that this is not an Alabama problem. There's no question that we're showing this through the lens of Alabama because we were able to get access. There was this tear in the fabric of secrecy, and we were able to look inside because of the bravery of the men and the cell phones. But, you know, I know you're from New Jersey, and if you look online and you see what, you know, what are the prison problems in New Jersey? I think, like earlier today I was looking at one which is the sexual assault case having to do with the Edna Man Correctional Facility. And, you know, there were horrific sexual assaults happening in a women's prison facility. We've seen this in Alabama where in the women's prison facility, many women were getting pregnant and there are no conjugal visits, so they were being raped by guards. And this is clearly something that was also happening right in. Right in Monmouth county or all over New Jersey, there have been problems like this. The DOJ stepped in, something they might not be as eager to do right now, but in the, under the, in the Biden doj, they, they stepped in and eventually negotiated a consent decree that essentially said, you know, we're going to try to tone down the raping and, you know, maybe do a little less of the violent sexual abuse of. Of women in our care. And ultimately, you know, the state spent a bunch of time trying to improve things, which I think they were able to do. But then very quickly they applied for eliminating the federal monitoring and they said, we don't need the consent decree anymore. And the DOJ said, okay, well, we agree you don't need the consent decree anymore. But these problems are so insidious that it's very hard to imagine that a facility that's doing that suddenly isn't doing that and that that's gonna stick.

David Fuerst (21:27)

Charlotte, you mentioned that you were having some community events, some screenings. Have those happened yet? And what kind of responses have you been getting in the state?

Charlotte Kaufman (21:38)

Yeah, those have been happening and they will continue to happen. And they're happening in corners of the state, you know, not just in theaters, but in churches and schools and places where we bring like a screen and a, and set it up that, that are not ready, you know, not typically welcoming films in. And it's been really powerful because so many people in the state have family members who have been incarcerated, you know, and so many people across America have family members who have been incarcerated. Something like 45% of Americans either have been incarcerated themselves or have a direct family member who has. But because of the secrecy of prisons, because of some of the shame associated with it, that story hasn't, hasn't really been told in a way that feels really reflective of what the experience is like. And I think a lot of people are feeling, it's almost like a catharsis. They're feeling validated by seeing their experience reflected back to them. It's like, you know, you can't imagine what, what it's like to live as a family member on the outside, not knowing what's happening to your loved one in a state run institution until you experience it yourself. And I think there is something very powerful happening with, with all of these mothers who are like Sandy Rae, who have gone through something like Sandy Ray, or other family members feeling like, oh, wow, our story is being told and actually there isn't shame around this. I can speak up. People will believe me because they'll now have seen it in this film. And we're seeing an energy and a movement on the ground Alabama, which is very encouraging.

Andrew Jarecki (23:21)

One of our, one of our co producers, Alex Duran, is a brilliant guy who was incarcerated at sing Sing for 12 years and ended up getting connected to the Bard prison initiative and getting an education and is now a senior guy in philanthropy and criminal justice reform in New York. And he told us early on when we showed him just footage from Alabama and he started to see the film coming together and started to work on it. He said, I need to do a screening for my family because my family never actually understood what was going on with me. My son, who was quite small when I went into prison, just thought, well, daddy's in a bad place. And he did a Bad thing. And, you know, hopefully it's all going to be clean and okay in there and he'll come back. But in fact, it wasn't clean. It wasn't okay. There were people getting killed all the time. There were people being abused by guards. You know, we just saw this happen with Robert Brooks in upstate New York, where guards on camera are killing a person in their care. And so Alex wanted to show it to his family just as a way to say, this is. You know, we've been screaming about this. It's not just that prisons aren't, you know, Hilton hotels. It's that these things are turning into murder factories, and the state is essentially sponsoring it. And nobody wants to look in there because, you know, you drive down the highway and you see the little metal sign that says XYZ Correctional, and you sort of think, well, I guess I don't need to turn on. I don't need to. They probably don't do tours anyway, but, you know, I got other things to do. But the reality is these are our fellow citizens, and by the way, 95% of them are coming out of prison. So if we're torturing them and traumatizing them during the course of their prison stay, is it reasonable to assume that they're going to be able to come out, rejoin society, and have a job and have a family? And then why are we surprised that the recidive. Recidivism rate is. Is so high?

David Fuerst (25:19)

Well, it's so valuable to have that cell footage, that firsthand footage from inside a system like this. But, of course, your sources are very much part of the story. They are activists. They are prisoners. Of course, we hear them talking about a narrative in some cases, like when they're planning the work stoppage. We hear them discussing the impacts of public opinion. And Andrew, editorially, as you're honing the narratives in this film, how were you thinking about the fact that you were leaning heavily on people with an interest in spreading certain narratives about their experience?

Andrew Jarecki (26:01)

Well, you know, I think we're all probably somewhat susceptible to the media interpretations of prison and saying, oh, these are the bad hombres, or you're gonna see lockup, or you're gonna see the worst of the worst. But the reality is that, you know, I think the people in prison are not all that different than the people that are not in prison. We certainly know that America incarcerates people for a whole series of different reasons and doesn't incarcerate other people. You know, we all know that there's stories all the time of people who stole $100 million in taxes from the government and they get a, you know, $20 million fine and they get to walk away. And there are other people who, you know, we've met, for example, in a women's prison. A number of the women were, were there because they stole baby formula. So that's clearly a crime of poverty. And that's a very different situation. So, you know, we're. The film does not argue that, you know, as, as some people say, oh, just open up all the gates of all the prisons and we don't need it. Right. The film basically says that at the very, at the very basic level, there ought to be protections and care given to people who are in the state's custody and lose their own agency, lose their ability to protect themselves, lose their ability to handle their own medical care. And the way the state and the way many states in the union have been addressing it is just to allow it to fall into total disarray. We see it extremely strongly in Alabama, but there are just very good arguments that this way of handling incarceration is not making us safer. Right. If you traumatize people and you put them in fear of their lives, they're going to become more anxious, more violent. If they have mental illness, it's going to be exacerbated, it's not treated. If they have drug addiction, they need to be treated for that. So we see the people inside and outside prison as having very similar needs. We just ignore the ones that are inside prison.

David Fuerst (28:10)

And Charlotte, I was going to just.

Charlotte Kaufman (28:11)

Go ahead to your question about the. How did we think about it from an editorial perspective? You know, obviously in our reporting, it was a six year investigation. It wasn't just people incarcerated who we spoke to. We spoke to dozens of staff members, government officials, you know, people who work in the mental health department within the prison. Every. You know, so many of the opinions that you see the incarcerated men share in the film have been backed up by many, many other sources. It's just that we found it important to center these voices because these are voices that are usually silenced. But this is. The opinions they have are not, are not unique to them. And you know, we do feature guards who did sit down to, to speak with us in the film. And one of the guards, Stacey George, he said, it's not in the film, but it stuck with us. He said, you know, the prisoners and guards are the same. The only difference is they're in white and we're in blue, but we're all in bondage within this system. So it may, you know, some people may say, oh, it could be one sided that you're hearing so much from the incarcerated population. But we made sure that our investigation and our reporting was informed by people from all sides of the, of the situation.

David Fuerst (29:36)

Andrew, we have a text from a listener, someone saying, I wonder if the filmmakers of the Alabama Solution worked at all with Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Institute down in Montgomery.

Andrew Jarecki (29:48)

Yeah, eji, The Equal Justice Initiative is running and was founded by Bryan Stevenson, who's a brilliant guy and has been supportive of what we're doing. And they tend to focus more on the legal aspects of it or, you know, generating litigation. They built an incredible museum down there and a memorial to people who were lynched. But for us, I think getting on the ground was the most important thing. Talking to families who have incarcerated relatives, talking to people in the government who say that they have strong opinions about the prisons. And in. Most disturbingly, I think the people who are in power in Alabama for the most part, are not people who visit the prisons. And so they'll say, well, of course I know, you know, I know what's going on in the prisons. I'm the boss, you know. But the reality is that when they get brought into the prisons, they're shown very much what we were shown on that first visit, which is smiling people talking about God and having some chicken. And what they don't understand is that there's probably somebody within 100 yards of that who may be dying of heat exhaustion because he's in a tin building at 110 degrees and hasn't been given fresh air. So there's an enormous disconnect between what the public is allowed to see and what is permitted to happen inside the institutions.

Charlotte Kaufman (31:13)

And Charlotte, I would say, oh, yeah.

David Fuerst (31:16)

Just as we're wrapping up, you know, has there been any resolution to these stories since the film has come out or anything? The subjects of your film would consider accountability.

Charlotte Kaufman (31:29)

I think we, I think we're waiting, we're still waiting to see accountability from the state. I think what's been very encouraging is that a very energetic conversation is now happening on the ground in Alabama. Just last week there was what's called a prison oversight meeting, which is when a certain group of state lawmakers meet on a quarterly basis to discuss the state of the prison. And usually it's a pretty sleepy meeting. It's kind of just a basic reporting. But at this meeting, the room was packed, over 100 people showed up. And the topic of conversation was what was revealed in the film and they had to answer to what are we gonna do about this? And so I think this is a first step in hopefully seeing some meaningful change. But there's a lot of work to be done.

David Fuerst (32:26)

Yeah, one thing that's a first step, but unfortunately we're gonna have to leave it right there. We have to wrap up. You can see much more in the documentary and we'll have.

Andrew Jarecki (32:36)

David, can I just make one suggestion, which is when people see the HBO or before, if they go to thealabamasolution.com, people say, well, what can I do? And the answer is you can go in there and just put in your email address and we'll give you things to do and ways to react and make a difference.

David Fuerst (32:54)

The new HBO documentary is the Alabama the Truth from the Inside Out. Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, thank you for speaking with us.

Andrew Jarecki (33:03)

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Charlotte Kaufman (33:35)

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Andrew Jarecki (33:39)

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