i wrote my senior thesis in college dealt with this subject. my main points involved the way that the majority group will take behaviors associated with a minority group and label them deviant, then outlaw them (the theoretical framework is straight out of durkheim). look at prohibition - this was aimed primarily at urban catholics who were moving to the country in large numbers. narcotics/drugs were the same story - the chinese with opium, blacks/mexicans with marijuana and blacks with crack cocaine. in the first three decades of the 20th century, american society changed rapidly for the first time. in 1900, it was primarily a rural protestant country with no electricity. by 1940, it was a multicultural country with most of the population in urban centers with electricity in the homes. the protestant elite would take behaviors associated with minority groups and outlaw them as a way to ensure that the the elites stayed the elite. we're still left with vestiges of these efforts today, and it infects our criminal justice system.
it's also important to differentiate between committing crimes, being arrested for crimes, and being prosecuted/jailed for crimes. there's little to no evidence that blacks commit more crimes, but they are arrested and prosecuted/jailed at much higher levels than whites. drug use is the same between almost all ethnic groups, but most drug arrests are of blacks and and even higher rate of incarceration will be for blacks, since the whites arrested are usually let off with diversion programs.