Comment by manachar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by manachar | Hacker News Reader

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It does go through a process, which at this point is considered constitutional, or more properly worded, has yet to be ruled unconstitutional in court.

Civil forfeiture was a highly successful tool to combat organized crime and grew enormously in the 80s with Reagan's odious war on drugs. It basically solves the problem of illicitly used money being able to free people the government wanted wanted to stop.

As a tool for dismantling organized crime, it was effective, useful, and generally seemed basically fair and as such seemed to survive court review.

Then came the war on drugs and a dose of right-wing anti-tax thinking.

"It's now possible for a drug dealer to serve time in a forfeiture-financed prison after being arrested by agents driving a forfeiture-provided automobile while working in a forfeiture-funded sting operation." — Reagan attorney general Richard Thornburgh in 1989.

It was specifically designed to help fund agencies in a way that replaced tax revenue. Starting at roughly this same time period most government agencies at all levels became cash-strapped in various ways. This meant some agencies have turned to civil forfeiture to create revenue.

It's clearly a bad incentive and needs to be reined in and reformulated to ensure rights are being respected.

BTW, a heavily armed citizenry is precisely why local police departments advocate for more and more militarized equipment. They'll call them gang members and drug dealers, but they are heavily armed citizenry nonetheless. Armed citizens won't solve any part of this problem.

There have been no successful tools against the war on drugs, only a tremendous violation of our constitutional rights with a few show trials to keep us all believing in the childish fantasy.

If you're going to say something is successful, be clear about it. Yes, it has been successful at locking up more people than any country in the world. Yes, it has been successful at seizing tons of property. No it hasn't been successful at putting any sort of dent into organized crime, which is fueled by the gigantic black market of drugs.

It was never envisioned as a tool to dismantling organised crime. That use came later. It was originally created to allow the govt to seize assets of non-citizens where the laws of the US could not be used. For example, captured assets of foreign drug suppliers where they were unable to prosecute those people. It was never envisioned to be used on US citizens because the laws of the US can be applied to citizens as their punishment. To have assets seized AND criminal prosecution is unconstitutional.

Wikipedia has a nice section on the history and includes this about constitutionality:

"While the 1993 Supreme Court case Austin v. United States ruled that a forfeiture could be considered as an excessive fine, the court upheld the principle of civil forfeiture generally. A 1996 Supreme Court decision ruled that prosecuting a person for a crime and seizing his or her property via civil forfeiture did not constitute double jeopardy, and therefore did not violate the Constitution. However, in 1999, the Supreme Court ruled that civil forfeiture was not permitted if the amount seized was "grossly disproportional" to the gravity of the offense."

It seems the current legal interpretations do not support considering double-dipping like this to be unconstitutional. However, it's also clear that it should be able to be argued that due process is not being followed, and the dollar value of punishment is excessive, which seems to be ACLU's stance on the matter. I hope the unconstitutional elements are removed from this tool sooner rather than later.

" nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

Seems pretty mindbogglingly clear to me. Regardless of what the present Justice Department refuses to go after, or what the present Supreme Courts choose to go after, the people practicing these policies are corrupt traitors committing literal armed robbery in defiance of their compact with the People. That sounds like a hyperbolic statement, but it's not.

I'm going to borrow xkcd's analogy at https://xkcd.com/463/

Imagine you're at a parent-teacher conference, and the teacher, out of the blue, assures you that while he doesn't wear a condom while teaching, all his STD testing is up to date and meets the state code as presently written; He has been inspected by the principal for venereal diseases on a weekly basis. He's clean, and your children are safe, no matter what their marks on the upcoming math test happen to be.

Yes. http://cafehayek.com/2011/05/bennis-v-michigan-and-the-awful... is also good.

Even when it was successful for some things ... when it hurts innocent people, the state has to find other tools to hunt down criminals.

You can't simply drop an atomic bomb on NYC -- and justify it, by saying you killed at least 100,000 criminals ...

I'm not sold that civil forfeiture is an atomic bomb. It's more like guns in the hands of police. It's a very dangerous tool in the hands of people who are charged with achieving something that occasionally needs dangerous tools to solve.

Guns have obviously led to killing innocents by police, and I'd like that number to go down. Heck, I'd like most police officers to not carry guns most of the time, leaving guns to SWAT teams that can be called in when needed. In other words, I want the dangerous tool used effectively in a manner that respects everyone's rights.

Same with civil forfeiture. It's clearly being used in an abusive fashion. Innocents are losing money and property to help pay for police. It blows my mind that it's being used this way and needs to be reformed. To me it would make sense to hold the property in some form of escrow until the finding of guilt or innocence, essentially freezing assets.

I did not say, that cf is an atomic bomb. I just wanted to use a picture to make it more clear, that the end does not justify all means.

I don't know, if cf can be reformed, so that it stays useful and has not such by-effects. The usefulness of cf is largely drawn from the aspect of being arbitrary.

The side effect of a constitutional state is, that some times the bad guys can use it to protect their bad ways. But the alternative would be bad for all.

cf does not only make innocent people to victims, but does change those to crooks, that should protect the innocent -- and thus an even bigger harm is done to the whole society -- with very bad consequences in the long run!

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