The first way in which the Court opened up some political space for prison reform was by making the abhorrent conditions in California’s prisons strikingly visible. In the nineteenth century, prisons opened their doors to the public and were popular destinations for gawking domestic and foreign tourists. In the 1960s and early 1970s, prison memoirs and accounts of life behind bars regularly turned up on best-seller lists. Today, however, the U.S. penal system is distinctive not only because of its huge size, but also because of its relative invisibility—leaving aside television shows like Oz, which contribute to a grossly distorted view of what is at stake in mass incarceration. The hundreds of prisons and jails that dot rural America and the desolate outskirts of cities, the 2.4 million men and women currently locked up, the 750,000 former offenders released from prison each year with stunted life chances, and the struggles of the millions of children with an incarcerated mother or father tend to leave little trace on the wider public consciousness.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in this acrimonious 5-4 decision, graphically catalogued the appalling conditions in California’s penal system, which operates at about 200 percent of capacity: as many as 50 sick inmates at a time held in 12 by 20 foot cages for up to five hours as they await medical treatment; as many as 54 prisoners sharing a single toilet; year-long waits for mental health treatment; a suicide rate nearly twice the national average for prisoners; a needless death every six to seven days because of delayed or inadequate medical care; and the “dry cages,” where suicidal prisoners are kept in telephone booth-sized enclosures without toilets. In case words were not enough, Kennedy appended to his decision photos of the “dry cages” and of a gymnasium-style room crammed with dozens of prisoners and their bunk beds. This was a rare instance where the Court turned to visual evidence to bolster a decision.

The second way in which the Court’s decision may prove important is its assiduous efforts to bring wider perceptions of the public safety effects of incarceration into better alignment with the latest social science research. In the decades-long prison build-up, penal expertise has been sidelined for the most part in public debates over crime and punishment. In an important departure, Kennedy showcased key findings of leading experts on crime and punishment about the association between mass incarceration and public safety. Kennedy noted that several states have successfully cut their prison populations without seeing their crime rates escalate. He also highlighted other important research findings, including that prisons might actually be criminogenic. As many experts on crime have noted, mass incarceration may actually increase the crime rate because imprisonment severs inmates’ ties to their jobs, families, and communities, expands opportunities for criminal networking, and subjects inmates to overcrowded and abusive conditions.

But if Brown v. Plata gives politicians in California some political cover to begin charting a new course for penal reform in the Golden State, what is still lacking in California and elsewhere is a political movement that can transcend the current political climate, which remains deeply and reflexively punitive. As Kennedy made clear in his decision, absent a political push for reform neither this ruling nor others by the courts are likely to be the major catalyst to reverse the prison boom or ameliorate abusive prison conditions. The “constitutional violations in conditions of confinement are rarely susceptible of simple or straightforward solutions,” Kennedy explained. “In addition to overcrowding the failure of California’s prisons to provide adequate medical and mental health care may be ascribed to chronic and worsening budget shortfalls, a lack of political will in favor of reform, inadequate facilities, and systemic administrative failures,” he continued.

As of yet, no factor, including the current fiscal crises in the states, has provided sufficient political impetus for comprehensive penal reform to slash the inmate population. California, for instance, has been teetering on the brink of fiscal and social disaster for several years. Yet the state has been unable or unwilling to pursue sensible and proven penal reforms to reduce its prison population in ways that do not seriously jeopardize public safety. Indeed, over the past three decades, the Golden State has gone from spending five dollars on higher education for every dollar spent on corrections to almost a dead-heat on spending. And yet California still holds fast to the toughest three-strikes law in the nation.