As we approach the decade anniversary of the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Plata (2011), it is perhaps a good time to take stock of some of the optimism expressed by this author (Simon, 2014) that the landmark prisoners’ rights decision, with its stark condemnation of the toxic combination of chronic illness, medical neglect, and overcrowding so typical of American prison systems in the era of mass incarceration, and its rhetorical invigoration of ‘dignity’ as a constitutional value, could play a role in taming mass incarceration in the United States. In doing so, part of the inquiry is juridical and jurisprudential. Did the opinion move the court system towards more protection of human rights for prisoners? The second aspect of the question is cultural and political. At a time of unprecedented public interest in reforming the criminal legal system in the United States, has the language or rhetoric of ‘human dignity,’ along with the problems of illness and overcrowding that the Plata case called national attention to, played a role in the foment? The Black Lives Matter movement, a major force in the street protests against policing in the summer of 2020, emerged just two years after Plata and, completely independently, has revitalized abolition discourse in the United States, leading to popular calls to ‘defund’ the police. To what extent should abolition and other goals of the movement for racial justice, supplant human dignity, with its liberal legal genealogy, as a meaningful lodestar for legal and political efforts to end mass incarceration? As an essay in normative sociological jurisprudence, my answers will be both descriptive and prescriptive.

当我们接近美国最​​高法院在布朗诉普拉塔案判决十周年之际（2011年），也许是个好时机，回顾一下作者（Simon，2014年）表达的乐观态度，这是具有里程碑意义的囚犯权利决定，它坚决谴责慢性病，医疗疏忽，大规模监禁时代美国监狱系统中如此典型的人满为患以及其“尊严”作为宪法价值的口头鼓舞可能会在驯服美国大规模监禁中发挥作用。在这种情况下，部分调查是司法和法学的。该意见是否使法院系统朝着为囚犯提供更多保护人权的方向迈进？问题的第二个方面是文化和政治。在美国面对着前所未有的改革刑事法律制度的公共利益之际，它具有“人的尊严”的语言或言论，普拉塔案堪称举世瞩目的，起了举足轻重的作用？黑人生活问题运动是2020年夏季街头抗议治安的主要力量，仅在普拉塔（Plata）成立仅两年后就出现了，并且完全独立地复兴了美国的废除言论，导致人们普遍呼吁“废除”警察。废除种族正义运动的其他目标和具有自由主义法律家谱的人的尊严应在多大程度上取代人类尊严，成为结束大规模监禁的法律和政治努力的有意义的代表？作为规范性社会学法学的论文，我的回答将是描述性的和规范性的。