Letter to Congress: Urgent Need for Civil Forfeiture Reform

In a recent letter to Congress, a variety of liberal and conservative groups urged the adoption of simple civil forfeiture reforms such as sending proceeds to the general treasury, eliminating partnering programs, and adding judicial oversight.

“The simple truth is that civil forfeiture continues throughout the United States because law enforcement has a very specific financial incentive to use it: it gets to keep the money. In the federal system and most states, the property that is seized and forfeited is not delivered to the federal or state treasuries, but instead is kept by the law enforcement agencies themselves. The proceeds are then spent not by Congress or state legislatures, but by the same law enforcement agencies that have sent their agents into the streets to collect it….. The problems with civil forfeiture begin with the financial incentive, but they do not end there. In the federal system, any innocent person whose property is unjustly seized through this system faces a profoundly difficult, time-consuming, and often prohibitively expensive process to get it back, one in which the property is presumed guilty, the innocent owner has no right to legal representation, and the government has no obligation to meet criminal standards of proof. These procedural deficiencies, where the deck is structurally stacked against the citizen, in favor of the seizing entity, only add insult to injury.”

Read the full letter here.