Case Brown v. Plata: mass incarceration in California.

In this article, it is analyzed the phenomenon of mass incarceration and its pernicious consequences in the prison system of California. In this bias, it is sought to understand the punitive expansionism and its destructive effect in the American prison system, notably Californian, exteriorized by a massive incarceration and chronic structures failures in the penitentiary system, starting from the paradigm inaugurated by modernity that radically changed the social, economic relations and power in American continent, making comparison with Brazilian prison reality. In that way, it is uncovered the influential elements in the crisis of the penitentiary system of the state of California, verified in the late twentieth and early twentieth century, which opened the scourges of the American penitentiary system, seen as a degrading space and generator of systemic violation of the inmates’ rights. Finally, it is proposed to alter radically this scenario, through the adoption of effective and etiological measures, non-popular and non-electoral,  to humanize the prison or at least to this reach tolerable standards.