Two provocative papers issued by CJCJ this month find that despite racial progress in other areas, American authorities’ historical campaign to associate taboo drugs, particularly marijuana, with “Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos,” and other minorities (U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics Harry Anslinger, 1936) remains powerful in 2010. CJCJ’s first paper analyzes new criminal justice, health, and drug monitoring agency statistics to document that California operates a separate, harshly unequal…
Blog Jul 21, 2010
Building a new consensus on California prison policy
The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association are co-hosting an unprecedented series of policy discussions in Sacramento with some of the state’s leading correctional experts to help forge a consensus on future corrections policy. With the continued deterioration of conditions in the state’s prisons, a new urgency has emerged that is bringing together a new coalition of groups and individuals to work with state leaders to address…
Blog Jul 12, 2010
BP Oil — The Plot (and oil) Thickens
Is there any end in sight to this criminal act? My previous blog focused on the fact that this was a case begging for a criminal indictment. I neglected to mention the fact that BP Oil, along with the entire oil industry, has figured out methods of living off the public dole. As reported in the New York Times recently the platform were the oil rig was sitting on is owned by a company called Transocean a company that had moved its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Cayman…
Blog Jul 12, 2010
Let Our Kids Shoot Back
Let Our Kids Shoot Back! Recent sweeping affirmations by the U.S. Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010), that “the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of… individual self-defense” as “a basic right” means gun possession by children and youths must be legalized immediately. Given the expansion of laws easing more widespread ownership of guns by adults and Court decisions forbidding lawmakers from infringing…
Recently, the Department of Juvenile Facilities (formerly known as the California Youth Authority) claimed to be in 85% compliance with the consent decree under the Farrell litigation. This percentage cultivates a skewed perception of the state youth correctional facility’s progress towards reforming into a rehabilitative environment. In April 2010, CJCJ’s Executive Director Daniel Macallair highlighted this issue in the California Progress Report . As DJF touts its progress it is important…