A few years ago, for the first time in recorded history, law enforcement agencies took more money and property from Americans than all burglars and thieves combined. How? It was done through a practice known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement officials to seize property that they suspect is connected to criminal activity without ever convicting or even charging the property owners with a crime.
Civil asset forfeiture is a gross abuse of policing power that violates a number of our most cherished rights, including due process and the protection of private property.
It’s also a problem that disproportionately impacts young people. A Department of Justice analysis found that millennials make up nearly 40 percent of the federal inmate population and half of state prison populations. In fact, by the time they turn 23, nearly one-in-three young people will have been arrested.
Until recently, a bipartisan push was emerging to scale back over-criminalization run amok. In 2015, the federal government scaled back its participation in civil asset forfeiture and nearly half of all state legislatures had taken steps to limit civil asset forfeiture in recent years. More recently, in an unusual sign of political alignment, both Republican and Democratic Party platforms included language criticizing this questionable policing practice.
Now, against this backdrop of overwhelming opposition to what is essentially government-sponsored stealing, the U.S. Department of Justice recently unveiled a new directive that will not only revive the practice of the feds sharing their ill-gotten booty with local police departments, but expand it.
According to the new guidelines, the Justice Department will override the will of the states that have already enacted laws to limit the practice of civil asset forfeiture.
At an event in Minneapolis, Attorney General Jeff Sessions laid out his defense of civil asset forfeiture as “appropriate” and necessary in order to defund organized crime. Perhaps anticipating the inevitable backlash, the nation’s highest-ranking law enforcement official took great pains to assure the public that law-abiding Americans will not be affected by this new directive.
History suggests otherwise.
Consider the case of the Oklahoma Christian band members who lost $53,000 in property, or a self-described “soccer mom” in Michigan who saw local law enforcement officials seize her daughter’s birthday money after being suspected of violating state medical marijuana laws. In both cases, the charges were eventually dropped, but not before inflicting unnecessary shame, stress, and trauma to those wrongfully accused.
Lest one think that these two cases are outliers, in 2011 alone, the Philadelphia DA filed a whopping 6,500 civil forfeiture cases. In Camden County, GA, local sheriffs have seized more than $20 million over two decades.
These operations disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in our communities – a point that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made in responding to a petition for a seizure case that the Court ultimately decided not to hear; Justice Thomas pointed to the “egregious and well-chronicled abuses” of the system.
“Forfeiture operations frequently target the poor and other groups least able to defend their interests,” he wrote. Doubling down on civil asset forfeiture makes no legal or moral sense. We should not be asking dedicated law enforcement officers to engage in such policing for profit, a practice that is inconsistent with their proper role of keeping communities safe.
There is a better way to protect the due process rights of everyone while ensuring that the bad guys don’t get to keep cash or property that they acquired illegally. The simple solution is to require a criminal conviction for any asset forfeitures.
The attorney general needs to rethink this move and put an end to the Justice Department serving as an enabler of policing for profit.
