On both the state and federal levels, forfeiture provides a perverse incentive for officers to conduct searches without compelling evidence of a crime — and to pressure people to give up property, because police departments and other agencies get to keep a cut of the seized property. As the Institute for Justice has documented, state and federal law enforcement agencies seize billions of dollars in assets every year, most of which they keep to fund their own operations. Among those forfeitures are countless stories of innocent people who lost their hard-earned money and spent years fighting to win it back — often unsuccessfully.
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December 26, 2024
Making the case for a new push for federal forfeiture reforms
The Washington Post has this new editorial advocating for federal legislative forfeiture reform headlined "The DEA shows why officers cannot police themselves when seizing assets: A DOJ inspector general report underscores the need for reforming civil forfeiture practices." I recommend the full piece, and here is how it concludes (with links from the original):
Unsurprisingly, the practice has earned bipartisan outrage. Thirty-seven states and D.C. have already passed legislation to reform their own forfeiture laws, and last year the House Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to advance a bill that would direct revenue from forfeitures to the federal government’s general fund rather than to law enforcement agencies. That legislation would also eliminate “equitable sharing,” which allows state and local police to sidestep state limits on civil forfeitures by working with federal agencies, which then share a portion of any seized assets. Frustratingly, that bill never made it to a floor vote.
The purpose of such reforms is not to eradicate the practice; it is to ensure that officers see it as a tool to get the bad guys, not as a way to pad their budgets. By taking away the profit motive, agencies such as the DEA might finally exercise their forfeiture powers with due caution.
December 26, 2024 at 12:32 PM | Permalink
Comments
I can think of two reforms that would make sense -- both variations on what my state does.
First, a forfeiture should only be available if there is a finding of guilt. I would make a couple of exceptions to my state's practice: 1) if a defendant dies or absconds, forfeiture should still be available but would require proof beyond a reasonable doubt that an offense was committed in the forfeiture case; 2) an NGRI should satisfy the requirement of a finding of guilt (although I am less committed to the second). This recommendation comes from my experience with holding property (automobile used to transport drugs) that depreciates after a defendant has absconded. By the time that the abandoned property law kicked in, we had substantial storage fees and the value had diminished to a point where the sale did not even cover the storage fees.
Second, as suggested in the article, my state does not give forfeiture proceeds to law enforcement. Instead, it gives it to education. While I am not sure that education is always the best recipient, the forfeiture proceeds (whether state or federal) should not go to a law enforcement fund (or even general revenue as, in many jurisdictions, there would be an implicit understanding that these "general revenue funds" should be spent on law enforcement). This restriction should apply both to state forfeitures and to the federal forfeiture proceeds shared with state and local governments.
Posted by: tmm | Dec 27, 2024 7:17:29 AM
