Hacker News Reader

Comment by asimpletune | Hacker News Reader

Can someone please argue the position of the side in favor of civil forfeiture?

Although I don't agree with it, I am knowledgeable about the side in favor of civil forfeiture. (I grew up in Indiana, and my dad was an attorney there.)

The "other side" says: Seizing Land Rovers from drug dealers helps fund underfunded rural police departments, and keeps them from having to raise taxes on law-abiding citizens.

I have no doubt that every aspect of this viewpoint is debatable. However, that's the viewpoint, per your request.

You could also charge a fee to everyone who calls 911.

Seriously though. The police are a service provider who are employed by and act on behalf of all citizens. If we want functioning law enforcement, we should be willing to pay for it.

We might not appreciate it on a daily basis, but functioning law enforcement saves individuals a lot of money. Imagine if they didn't exist and everyone had to to organise their own security.

Imagine if they didn't exist and everyone had to to organise their own security.

In many locations this is effectively the situation. Police show up after crimes are over. Sometimes they help the victims of crime, sometimes they don't. The crimes that police interrupt are largely the victimless ones; after all there is no victim to report the crime so if they want to prosecute they had better catch the accused in the act.

Somebody will say that this only appears to be the case because police have already put lots of criminals in prison. Since there are few criminals remaining, we don't have to worry so much about crimes happening now. I can't agree, at least in USA. Our prison population is 4-5 times what it should be. If they imprison multitudes, they don't get credit for the possibility that some of the imprisoned actually should be imprisoned.

If some crack dealer buys a car or house using drug money, instead of just carrying cash, he can still have that illegally paid for goods taken away. Like if some guy buys an escalade with crack money the cops can take the escalade as it was paid with illegal gains. Or with cash if you have a ton of cash that the cash was proceeds from drug deals in the past that can't be proven but they shouldn't be able to keep the drug cash just because they couldn't prove every sale of drugs by the dealer. Like if they catch a dealer with wads of cash, obviously the cash likely was from selling more drugs.

Although obviously cops have gone way to far with seizing shit and very stupidly if the person's criminal charges are dropped (or some times not even filed) they don't automatically get their seized goods back.

I do not agree with this argument, but it goes like this:

If a wealthy drug dealer has cars, boats, houses and whatnot that are used in the course of committing crimes, the government should be able to seize them to stop them from continuing to be used for this purpose. If a drug dealer has a large amount of cash earned from the sale of drugs, he should not be able to use his ill-gotten gains to pay for lawyers or escape or anything else. Also, the seizures help local law enforcement defray the cost of catching the criminal, a cost they would not have had to incur had he not been a criminal.

Again, I think these are terrible arguments, but there you are.

Right, but that's an argument for after the crime has been proven. It's not an argument for seizing property just on the thought that one might be involved in crime.

The counter-argument here would be that the drug dealer should not be able to use the cash(and other assets) they obtained through their crimes to defend themselves. Waiting until conviction would mean that the alleged criminal could exhaust those assets as part of his defense.

I don't think that counter argument can be made. Until the crime is proven, the assumption has to be that those assets were gotten legally. Otherwise, really, what's to stop police from seizing the assets of anyone who's case might be shaky?

"the end justifies the means"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com