President and General Counsel
Grades |
State Law Evasion Grade | Final Grade |
|
Arizona
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Forfeiture Law![]() |
Arizona’s civil asset forfeiture laws are in need of serious reform. In Arizona, the government may forfeit your property by showing by a preponderance of the evidence that the property is subject to forfeiture. Unfortunately, a property owner claiming an innocent owner exemption to the forfeiture laws—because, for example, he did not know his property was being used illegally—bears the burden of proving his innocence.In Arizona, law enforcement personnel have a strong incentive to seize as much property as they can since they receive 100 percent of the funds raised through civil forfeitures. Even more troublesome, Arizona law enforcement can use forfeiture revenue to pay the direct salaries of personnel.[1] Arizona took advantage of its broad forfeiture statutes by collecting more than $64 million in forfeiture revenue in a mere four-year period (2000-2003). Arizona also received over $35 million in equitable sharing revenue from 2000 to 2008, although these numbers may overlap to some extent, as it is not clear whether equitable sharing revenue was included in responses to freedom of information requests.
[1] Keller, T., & Wright, J. (2004). Policing and prosecuting for profit: Arizona’s civil asset forfeiture laws violate basic due process protections (No. 198). Phoenix, AZ: Goldwater Institute. |
Forfeitures as Reported to LEMAS (Drug-related only)![]() |
|||||||||||||||
|
Equitable Sharing Proceeds from the Assets Forfeiture Fund (AFF) ![]() |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Freedom of Information Data![]() |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Reports of forfeitures by county; types and numbers of law enforcement agencies unclear
|
Arlington, Va.—It’s called policing for profit and it’s happening all across America. Arizona’s laws and practices make it among the worst abusers in the nation. Under a practice called “civil forfeiture,” police and prosecutors’ offices seize private property—often without ever charging the owners with a crime, much less convicting them of one—then keep or sell…
Institute for Justice
901 N. Glebe Road, Suite 900
Arlington, VA 22203
© Institute for Justice 2021
IJ® is a registered trademark of the Institute for Justice.
Privacy Policy
Last modified: January 1, 2020