[techdragon]

Look… I agree… but I can also understand the logic behind the fundamental concept of civil asset forfeiture. When you have a trunk full of drugs or cash and no one to point the finger at… it makes a twisted kind of sense to empower the state to simply sue the objects in question and allow the system to move forward efficiently.

What civil asset forfeiture had become is a god damn evil monstrosity… but the seed it grew from isn’t inherently damned… it’s the precedent and case law that has turned it into a twisted monster that is perpetuating abuse of the citizens of the United States of America.

[dragonwriter]

Its mostly the incentives spurred by the Drug War federal decision to let individual LE agencies keep a share of proceeds of federal-law seizures they execute (most state forfeiture laws direct the proceeds to state general funds, so LE agencies don’t directlt profit from them) which created the problem, because it turned civil forfeiture into a funding stream detached from local government priorities for the agencies who participated.