In any given year over the last two decades, San Francisco Police Department arrests for simple possession of marijuana have varied by up to 300% over other years. After a 1999 peak (946 arrests), numbers plunged to 357 in 2007, then nearly doubled to 609 in 2008. Why? Who knows?

Just released Criminal Justice Statistics Center 2008 crime numbers and Center for Health Statistics 2007 death figures deal a double whammy to three decades of California’s criminal justice failure. But first, the ironies.

Last month, CJCJ released a detailed study documenting the feasibility, benefits, and cost savings of closing California’s juvenile prison system and transferring its dwindling roster of inmates to county detention facilities.

After more than 20 years, even with the heightened awareness of the impact of the drug war on blacks and other minorities, Congress still does nothing.  The drug war’s impact has reached directly into minority neighborhoods with devastating results.  A recent book by Todd Clear documents the impact of mass incarceration (brought about mostly by the drug war) on these communities.  He shows

The “war on drugs” must be seen as a concerted effort (whether this has been intended is irrelevant) to keep the black population in a secondary status.  Such an effort can be traced to the days of slavery and even for about 100 years after slavery officially ended, at least in the South (see Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name