Executive Summary

Every year, police and prosecutors across the United States take hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, cars, homes and other property—regardless of the owners’ guilt or innocence. Under civil forfeiture laws, the government can seize this property on the mere suspicion that it is connected to criminal activity. No charges or convictions are required. And once property is seized, owners must navigate a confusing, complex and often expensive legal process to try to win it back. Worst of all, most civil forfeiture laws give law enforcement agencies a powerful incentive to take property: a cut, or even all, of forfeiture proceeds.

This second edition of Policing for Profit examines civil forfeiture laws and activity nationwide, demonstrating how financial incentives to seize property, in combination with weak protections for property owners, put people’s property at risk. The report grades the civil forfeiture laws of each state and the federal government, documents remarkable growth in forfeiture activity across the country, and highlights a worrisome lack of transparency surrounding forfeiture activity and expenditures from forfeiture funds. Key findings include:

Forfeiture activity has exploded, particularly in
the new millennium.

Forfeited cash and proceeds from the sale of forfeited property generate revenue for the government—and provide an important measure of law enforcement’s forfeiture activity.

• In 1986, the Department of Justice’s Assets Forfeiture Fund took in $93.7 million in revenue from federal forfeitures. By 2014, annual deposits had reached $4.5 billion—a 4,667 percent increase.
• The forfeiture funds of the DOJ and Treasury Department together took in nearly $29 billion from 2001 to 2014, and combined annual revenue grew 1,000 percent over the period.
• Total annual forfeiture revenue across 14 states more than doubled from 2002 to 2013. Those 14 states were the only states for which the Institute for Justice could obtain forfeiture revenues for an extended period.

Civil forfeiture far outpaces criminal forfeiture.

Criminal forfeiture requires a criminal conviction to deprive people of their property. By contrast, civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to take property from innocent people never convicted of or even charged with a crime, making it easier for the government to forfeit property and harder for property owners to fight back.

• Just 13 percent of Department of Justice forfeitures from 1997 to 2013 were criminal forfeitures; 87 percent were civil forfeitures.
• Among DOJ civil forfeitures, 88 percent took place “administratively.” Administrative forfeitures happen automatically when a property owner fails to challenge a seizure in court for any reason, including the inability to afford a lawyer or a missed deadline to file a claim. The seized property is simply presumed “guilty” without a neutral arbiter such as a judge determining whether it should be permanently taken from its owner.

Federal and most state civil forfeiture laws put innocent property owners at risk.

This report’s grades for state and federal civil forfeiture laws indicate the threat they pose to innocent property owners. Laws that earn poor grades provide law enforcement with lucrative incentives to pursue forfeitures and afford weak protections to property owners. High grades signify laws that limit or ban forfeiture proceeds directed to law enforcement and offer stronger protections against unjust forfeitures.

• 35 states earn grades of D+ or worse.
• Federal civil forfeiture laws are among the nation’s worst, earning a D-.
• New Mexico and the District of Columbia earn the highest grades, thanks to 2015 reforms that eliminated financial incentives for civil forfeiture and improved property rights protections.

State and local law enforcement’s participation in federal “equitable sharing” has soared, and 2015 policy changes are unlikely to reverse the trend.

Equitable sharing allows state and local law enforcement to team with the federal government to forfeit property under federal law instead of state law. Participating agencies receive up to 80 percent of proceeds, creating a strong incentive to use equitable sharing to circumvent more restrictive state laws. The Department of Justice announced new policies in January 2015 intended to curb one type of equitable sharing—federal “adoptions” of locally seized assets. But the changes and subsequent clarifications largely left intact another vehicle for equitable sharing—joint task forces and investigations involving federal law enforcement.

• Between 2000 and 2013, annual DOJ equitable sharing payments to state and local law enforcement more than tripled, growing from $198 million to $643 million. In all, the DOJ paid state and local agencies $4.7 billion in forfeiture proceeds from 2000 to 2013.
• Only 18 percent of those proceeds resulted from federal adoptions of locally seized assets. The lion’s share—82 percent—resulted from joint task forces and investigations, procedures largely unaffected by new DOJ rules.
• In a nationwide ranking, Rhode Island, California, New York and Florida rank worst for equitable sharing participation, even after accounting for the rate of drug arrests by state. South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming rank at the top for their less frequent use of equitable sharing.
• New Mexico’s 2015 reform effectively ends equitable sharing participation in the state, and the District of Columbia’s reform will do the same in the nation’s capital by 2018.

Most state and federal civil forfeiture laws lack even basic transparency requirements, leaving the public in the dark about most forfeiture activity.

Poor public reporting about law enforcement’s use of civil forfeiture makes it difficult, if not impossible, for lawmakers and the public to hold agencies accountable.

• Only 11 states and the federal government make any kind of forfeiture information publicly accessible online. Another three states and the District of Columbia will put forfeiture records online in 2016. Obtaining information elsewhere requires public records requests, which are often arduous and ineffective.
• The limited information available is plagued by missing data and typically lacks key details, such as whether a forfeiture was civil or criminal or, in some cases, the type of property seized.
• Although the Department of Justice’s forfeiture database tracks more than 1,300 variables about cash and property seizures, not one indicates whether a criminal charge or conviction accompanied a forfeiture. The DOJ carefully tracks and reports forfeiture revenue, but fails to publicly report whether forfeitures target proven criminals.

Nearly all expenditures of forfeiture proceeds are hidden from public view.

Forfeiture laws typically place few limits on law enforcement spending of forfeiture proceeds and impose even fewer checks to ensure that expenditures are proper or legal. Scant reporting requirements heighten the risk of abuse by shielding expenditures from public scrutiny.

• The few data available for the federal government and a handful of states indicate only broad categories of spending, making it impossible to evaluate individual expenditures.
• When expenditures were provided by category, most known spending by state and local agencies was listed under equipment, “other,” and salaries and overtime. Only tiny fractions went toward substance abuse or crime prevention programs.
• In 2007, law enforcement agencies in eight states spent more than $42 million in equitable sharing payments on “other” items. In 2012, agencies in four states spent $13.7 million in state forfeiture money on “other.”

Civil forfeiture laws pose one of the greatest threats to property rights in the nation today. They encourage law enforcement to favor the pursuit of property over the pursuit of justice, and they typically give the innocent little recourse for recovering seized property. And without meaningful transparency, law enforcement faces little public accountability for its forfeiture activity or expenditures from forfeiture funds.

The best solution would be to simply abolish civil forfeiture. Short of that, lawmakers should eliminate financial incentives to take property, bolster property rights and due process protections, and demand transparency for forfeiture activity and spending. No one should lose property without being convicted of a crime, and law enforcement agencies should not profit from taking people’s property.