That said, the reality is that the asset forfeiture regulations are not well-formed, and the oversight is very far from where it needs to be given the extreme power these laws give to the law enforcement authorities. As such, this effectively leads to a money grab in some areas.
This just strikes me as a case of making a potentially reasonable policy (if that's one's perspective on the world), but not creating the proper infrastructure to support it in a transparent way that mainstream citizens would find reasonable. As such, it is very prone to abuse.
Note also that the biggest hauls give some federal agencies a tremendous amount budget flexibility. Again, the oversight for this is not well-formed, perhaps intentionally.
Note that I personally do not agree with this line of thinking, but I just wanted to explain the perspectives of others who support these decisions.
CRIMINAL asset forfeiture they can seize drug money provided they prove an individual committed a crime and link that asset to said crime beyond a reasonable doubt
Civil Asset forfeiture they have do not have to prove a crime was committed, and the person has to prove they obtained the asset legally.
Criminal Asset forfeiture if you can not afford a lawyer one is provided to you, Civil Asset forfeiture you are simply SOL, so if they take $10,000 from you, and a lawyer want $10,000 to fight your case well why bother?
Civil Asset Forfeiture is a end run around due process and the constitution
For example, if my wife (or girlfriend or brother or associate) buys an airplane and I use it to fly drugs from Mexico into the US, then without forfeiture laws I could be charged, but the airplane wouldn't be seized. Is that right?
I've heard the argument that money is presumed guilty (or something to that affect) and I've never quite nailed down what that was all about. Does it make sense to you?
Also ends up with legal proceedings then not against you, but against your money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U...
There are 2 common things that lead to a seizure, people have in their possession large sums of money or valubake assets while traveling. A minor crime in commited (like having a small qty of drugs) so the police take unrelated assets sometimes not even owned by the person. Example is when the government seized a persons home because their child had drugs in their room.
Most of the cases the government has to prove it is "more likely than not" the property is connected to a criminal event, this is a terribly low standard is given the number of laws on the books easily overcome by most prosecutors
However as IJ States in their report Policing for Profit
https://www.ij.org/images/pdf_folder/other_pubs/assetforfeit...
"if property is used illegally without the owner’s knowledge or consent, the burden is placed on the property owner to establish her innocence in court, not the government to prove otherwise. In other words, a property owner is guilty until proven innocent. "
They continue with
"In reality, few property owners, especially low-income individuals, can meet the burdens of civil forfeiture proceedings and often do not challenge seizures of their property. This is especially true when government seizes property the value of which would be greatly exceeded by the time, attorney fees and other expenses necessary to fight the forfeiture. As a result, many property owners do not and cannot challenge forfeitures, and the government obtains the property by default."
That is what happens most of the time, the process is soooo slanted in favor of the government people just give up and do not even attempt to fight. The government then twists that as being "proof" the property was gotten via illegal means and often cited as the "system working"
Be better.
Forfeiture, bombing the Middle East, travel bans, etc
So much stuff the current Administration is doing that the last Administration did...
and NOW people are losing their shit.
Just a bit questionable for a large part of the conversation to be started now, eh?
And yes people should be "losing their minds" over the elicitation in these tactics.
But there are a large number of people who are only NOW raising hell about drone bombs, travel bans, EO's, Scotus decisions, etc, etc, etc...
Where was the ruckus during the last 8 years of horrible decisions, bad direction, over reach, etc?
I'm not saying it doesn't need to be address... but the amount of "My Team" that goes on is... maddening...
Second, try using Reddit’s search function or Google’s trends app to see just how devastatingly demonstrably wrong your claims about interest in bombing the Middle East or civil asset forfeiture are.
Sort of looks like you’re the only one who’s just now giving a shit, eh?
Bombing the Middle East broke all records during the last Administration... not that this one won't continue to break records, but we were at war for the entire previous Administration and will probably remain so for this one...
I know of many cases of CAF during the previous Administration. I'm sad that the current administration doesn't seem to be restoring law and order to the degree I had hoped they would.
I've given a shit for a long time. I live in a heavily one-sided state and I sit on the other side - so, for the most part, my vote doesn't matter.
What DOES matter is that the stuff people are RAGING MAD!!!! about is stuff that, for a large part, is no different from before. You can nit-pick over minor differences between Travel bans... but there was NO care about those bans for the 8 years prior.
My main point here... is people pick a team... and then lose their shit when their team loses. What's important isn't the Travel Ban (or whatever). Whats important is the "Other Guy's Quarterback" is calling the plays. Even if they are the same plays "My Quarterback" would have chosen - or has chosen repeatedly - NOW we are going to "resist".
The hypocrisy is maddening - from both "sides".
And you'll note, they're not even giving a shit about asset forfeiture, or travel bans—they're giving a shit about people complaining about Trump.
Holder and Lynch at least showed some signs of slowly creeping away from the failed 1980s policies, such as reducing mandatory minimums (http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/12/politics/holder-mandatory-mini...) and letting states experiment a little bit (albeit grumpily in Lynch's case in particular) with legal marijuana laws (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/29/justic...).
Jeff Sessions in contrast is pretty much doubling down on failed 1980s policy. A more trivial but telling example is how Sessions completely embraced D.A.R.E. -- a program that pretty much has been proven over and over again as ineffective.(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448384/)
I hope DARE doesn't return - as you said, the War on Drugs is about as successful as Prohibition... aka: not remotely.
There are many things I like and dislike about the current administration... I don't think I'd like a doubling down on a failed War on Drugs.
Definitely, neither party (at the national level in particular) has been doing what most policy wonks I've read would believe is the correct thing... and I've been reading for decades how America's criminal justice policies (from its high prison rate to horrible policies like civil asset forfeiture) are often ineffective, expensive, and prone to corruption.
Unfortunately, Americans historically has rewarded "tough on crime" stances at the ballot box, definitely in the 1980s and 1990s from what I remember. That probably honestly is the root cause. Even today, a majority of Americans still generally want to be "tough" on violent criminals, even if "tough" might be ineffective. (https://www.vox.com/2016/9/7/12814504/mass-incarceration-pol...) The good news is that Americans are changing their views on non-violent drug offenders -- there's some agreement that locking them up may not be the best thing.
For this particular issue, there pretty much is bipartisan agreement that civil asset forfeiture is horrible. (https://www.cato.org/blog/84-americans-oppose-civil-asset-fo...).
I've heard of some states partially reforming civil asset forfeiture recently -- as it seems typical in politics these days, a hodgepodge of states, led by neither one party or the other (often the reform bills are with bipartisan support), lead the way.
— Reagan attorney general Richard Thornburgh in 1989
Replace "drug dealer" with "minority individual" and this quote would be as accurate today as it was in 1989.
I hope that does not come across as sardonic. If a functional mechanism to curb these kinds of excesses does not exist anymore, that is something which we will have to come to terms with as a society.
Really? It's the same as it's ever been...they want more money, more control and more time.