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Policing for Profit
In the 2024 case Culley v. Marshall, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the Constitution guarantees a timely hearing in court when a person’s property is seized for civil forfeiture. Unfortunately, as this fourth edition of Policing for Profit finds, civil forfeiture procedures frequently fail to deliver on this promise, and this lack of due process…
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Bad Data
Every year, Indiana prosecutors produce reports for lawmakers detailing forfeiture activity in the state, but Bad Data shows these reports should be taken with a multimillion-dollar grain of salt. This study finds nearly 2,000 forfeiture cases worth more than $10 million over six years that were never reported, and the problem was worse in counties that farm…
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Forfeiture in Arizona Before Reform
In 2021, the Arizona Legislature enacted sweeping forfeiture reforms. The reforms were motivated by concerns that forfeiture was being used to take property like cash and cars from ordinary people who had never been convicted of any crime, with little transparency or accountability. While it is too soon to say whether the 2021 reforms are working…
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Frustrating, Corrupt, Unfair
Victims of civil forfeiture call it frustrating, corrupt and unfair. This first-of-its-kind survey describes the experiences of victims of one civil forfeiture program, Philadelphia’s. It finds victims typically came from disadvantaged communities, and they had extreme difficulty trying to fight the forfeiture of their property, even when innocent. It also suggests the program did little…
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Does Forfeiture Work?
Forfeiture is a controversial tool police and prosecutors use to take and keep people’s cash, cars and even homes under the guise of fighting crime. This study is the first to look at whether state forfeiture actually fights crime or is instead used to “police for profit.” Looking at data from five states that use…
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Jetway Robbery
Law enforcement agencies routinely seize currency from travelers at airports nationwide using civil forfeiture—a legal process that allows agencies to take and keep property without ever charging owners with a crime, let alone securing a conviction. This study is the first to examine airport currency seizures by Department of Homeland Security agencies. It is also…
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Fighting Crime or Raising Revenue?
This study—the most extensive and sophisticated of its kind—combines more than a decade’s worth of data from the nation’s largest forfeiture program, the Department of Justice’s equitable sharing program, with local crime, drug use and economic data from a variety of federal sources. Results are clear: Forfeiture has no meaningful effect on crime fighting, but…
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Forfeiture Transparency and Accountability
Most civil and criminal forfeiture activity happens with little legislative or public oversight. So does most spending from forfeiture funds. This report examines forfeiture reporting requirements and practices for all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia and the U.S. departments of Justice and the Treasury. It finds that forfeiture programs nationwide suffer…
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Forfeiture in Arizona
In 2017, Arizona adopted incremental but important bipartisan reforms of the state’s civil forfeiture system, including new transparency requirements for forfeiture. The first full year of these new reports—for Fiscal Year 2018—is already illuminating. The Institute for Justice’s analysis of these reports finds evidence of forfeiture abuse in Arizona.
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Civil Forfeiture, Crime Fighting and Safeguards for the Innocent
In 2017, the Department of Justice revived a controversial federal forfeiture program the previous administration had sharply curtailed. Using the DOJ’s own data, this paper finds that the DOJ cannot substantiate its claim that civil forfeiture fights crime. It also concludes that the DOJ’s new safeguards are unlikely to provide meaningful protection to innocent property owners.
