Ron Paul Institute<\/p>\n
Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently ordered the Justice Department to increase the use of civil asset forfeiture, thus\u00a0once again endorsing an unconstitutional, authoritarian, and increasingly unpopular policy.<\/p>\n
Civil asset forfeiture, which should be called civil asset theft, is\u00a0the practice of seizing property believed to be involved in a crime.\u00a0The government keeps the property even if it never convicts, or even charges, the owner of the property.<\/p>\n
Police can even use civil asset theft to steal from people whose property was used in criminal activity without the owners\u2019 knowledge.\u00a0Some have even lost their homes because a renter or houseguest was dealing drugs on the premises behind the owners\u2019 backs.<\/p>\n
Civil asset theft is a\u00a0multi-billion dollar a year moneymaker for all levels of government.\u00a0Police and prosecutors receive more than their “fair share\u201d of the loot. According to a 2016 study by the Institute for Justice, 43 states allow police and prosecutors to keep at least half of the loot they got from civil asset theft.<\/p>\n
Obviously, this gives police an incentive to aggressively use civil asset theft, even against those who are not even tangentially involved in a crime. For example, police in Tenaha, Texas literally engaged in highway robbery \u2014 seizing cash and other items from innocent motorists \u2014 while police in Detroit once seized every car in an art institute\u2019s parking lot. The official justification for that seizure was that the cars belonged to attendees at an event for which the institute had failed to get a liquor license.<\/p>\n
The Tenaha police are not the only ones targeting those carrying large sums of cash.\u00a0Anyone traveling with “too much” cash runs the risk of having it stolen by a police officer, since carrying large amounts of cash is treated as evidence of involvement in criminal activity.<\/p>\n
Civil asset theft also provides an easy way for the IRS to squeeze more money from the American taxpayer.\u00a0As the growing federal debt increases the pressure to increase tax collections without raising tax rates, the IRS will likely ramp up its use of civil asset forfeiture.<\/p>\n
Growing opposition to the legalized theft called civil asset forfeiture has led 24 states to pass laws limiting its use.\u00a0Sadly, but not surprisingly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is out of step with this growing consensus.\u00a0After all, Sessions is a cheerleader for the drug war, and civil asset theft came into common usage as a tool in the drug war.<\/p>\n
President Trump could do the American people a favor\u00a0by naming a new attorney general who opposes police state policies like the drug war and police state tactics like civil asset theft.<\/p>\n