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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

To see both sides of this issue, you have to understand the thinking that brought this sort of legislation into use. Let's say you have some bad guy, whether he/she's a low-level crack dealer that sells on the streets or a gang leader who has all kinds of stuff going on.

When you arrest this person, what happens to their assets that they've (assumingly) illegally obtained? The hundred thousand in drug money? The guns, high end electronics, luxury cars, etc?

You weaken the individual criminal and their gangs by taking their money away. It's far to easy to just pass those assets on to another person and they can simply assume the role. And after the person does their 5-10 years in prison should they be released back to what they had obtained through illegal activity?

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Leaving aside the specific laws in question (to avoid derailing this into a discussion on the sanity of drug laws), it seems completely reasonable to seize assets generated by illegal activity, if such activity has been proven in a court of law. The accused remains innocent until proven guilty, and the seizure should be tied directly to a guilty verdict and included as part of sentencing. (In the case of a crime involving one or more victims, most notably theft, the proceeds should go directly to those victims.)

Today however, the processes for property seizure occur almost independently from the procedures of the criminal justice system; seizures can occur without any guilty verdict, and there's no guarantee that property will be returned to innocent people.

You hold the assets until the accused is either found guilty or innocent. If they are innocent you return the assets. (Never mind that they are now doing exactly that to prevent people from using their own money to pay for their own defense.)

When we grant law enforcement authority, we are extending them trust not to abuse it. They have failed to not abuse it, therefore the authority should be revoked. So yes, drug dealers should keep their money, so that random people don't get robbed by the police. If the police whine, tell them it's their own fault for abusing their power. (Of course this is idealistic garbage, the police are politically entrenched and rarely ever lose any power.)

If you believe in the Constitution, there really is no "other side" to this issue. The intent of the 4th amendment is clear. It says, in plain English, The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...

There is no reasonable way to reconcile this with taking things from people on little to no evidence based on a lawsuit against the items rather than the owners.

I would argue that there should be no drug prohibition to begin with since it's all non-violent transactions among consenting people, but that aside, I would rather the crack dealer keep his spoils (which he didn't steal, unlike the cops) and live with that than innocent people getting pillaged.

I have had a car seized from me without even being arrested or charged with a crime. The complete lack of due process is the problem, not seizure from people who have actually been tried and found guilty of a suitable offense. I don't think most people would complain about assets being seized from bonfide drug lords or the guy down the street with fancy rims and gold chains.

I am not clear, but I suspect laws existed to confiscate ill gotten gains from convicted criminals before this forfeiture began in the 80s. RICO perhaps?

Regardless of inspiration or intention, this process is highly flawed and it's far past time to end seizures from people who have not even been charged with a crime.

The second major issue is distributing the money to individual police officers. This combined with the lack of due process creates far too much incentive and ability for crooked police officers to seize funds motivated by their own self interest.

Awesome, and we can resume doing that--assuming it needs doing--once we've stamped out the repeated cases of some random person being pulled over for the "crime of DWB" with a few thousand dollars in his car being taken by the local police department because he "looked guilty."

In your example, there is a person that is arrested and convicted of a crime. I don't believe this is changing. The part of civil asset forfeiture that people are upset about is when the property is seized without anyone being convicted of a crime.

I believe problem is lack of due process (i.e. it is civil matter) + incentives for local police do this due most of proceeds awarded to agency who confiscated it.

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