No One Should Lose Their Property without Being Convicted of a Crime
< < Go Back
So why is it happening all across America every day?
What is Civil Forfeiture?
Civil forfeiture—a process by which the government can take and sell your property without ever convicting, or even charging, you with a crime—is one of the greatest threats to property rights in the nation today.
Civil forfeiture cases proceed under the legal fiction that cash, cars, or homes can be “guilty”—leading to such bizarre case names as United States v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Mass. But because these cases are technically civil actions, property owners receive few if any of the protections that criminal defendants enjoy. To make matters worse, when law-enforcement agencies take and sell your property, they frequently get to keep all the proceeds for their own use. This gives agencies a direct financial incentive to “police for profit” by seizing and forfeiting as much property as possible.
It’s time to end civil forfeiture.
More From Institute for Justice:
Rss Feed