“Incarcerated men defy the odds to expose a cover-up in America’s deadliest prison system,” reads the logline for the HBO-backed documentary “The Alabama Solution.” But that does not begin to describe this powerful and extremely necessary call-to-action.

Over the last decade, incarcerated men in Alabama prisons have been fighting to bring recognition to corruption and inhumane treatment. Thousands of men have died in prison, many at the hands of correctional officers and others of overdoses on drugs allegedly supplied by correctional officers. The death toll is so high that the Alabama Department of Corrections is widely regarded as the deadliest prison system in the United States. With the Adoc also supplying prison labor to private corporations like Walmart, Hyundai, and McDonald’s, accusations of modern-day slavery have also followed.

Veteran Emmy, Peabody and Sundance-winning filmmaker Andrew Jarecki, known for his 12-part HBO series “The Jinx” that led to Robert Durst...