Civil Asset Forfeiture

Something that's been in the news a lot lately, that even the Supreme Court has made comments on, is the practice of Civil Asset Forfeiture.  Recent revelations about government employees abusing the dubious practice in Oklahoma, where I live, have thrown the ethical issue back into the spotlight.  Law enforcement and government officials were investigated when it was found that assets seized by civil forfeiture had gone missing.  The assets were found to have been used inappropriately by certain individuals to do such unethical things like paying off their own student loans or even using the assets to pay their rent.

Civil asset forfeiture, as summarized in the attached article, is the practice of the government (usually local or state governments) seizing money or other assets believed to have been used in the drug trade or other crimes.  This is all well and good, but it starts to get into unethical territory when you consider that the government is allowed to keep the assets seized regardless of whether the person they were seized from was convicted, or even charged (!) for a crime.

An older story that I remember reading told of a young man who was traveling home from Kentucky and was stopped at an airport and had over $10,000 seized from him because his baggage smelled like marijuana, even though he didn't have any on his person or in his luggage.  The officer who took it rationalized that because he was on a one way ticket and had so much cash on him, he must be a drug dealer and thus his money was seized.  In reality, he's just a college student and the money was saved up by him so he would be able to afford to rent an apartment while he's at college.

This is just one example showing how unfair and unethical this practice is.  Not only does it unfairly rob people of their money for no real reason, even if it is being done correctly (it's always legal, as of right now), the funds may be inappropriately used by individuals in the government that does the seizing.  Everyone knows it's generally unethical to steal, and that's true even when it's "legal."  To make things worse, have something seized by law enforcement? You're in for a long, expensive legal battle to get it back, probably negating the possible gain from getting your own property back.  Some states are making it illegal to do this if the person isn't convicted of a crime, but that needs to be a nationwide law to make this practice more ethical.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/homepagelatest/oklahoma-watch-law-enforcement-seizures-misspent-missing/article_a1620c4e-55d1-586d-88d4-1b6ea74232c0.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/30/drug-cops-took-a-college-kids-life-savings-and-now-13-police-departments-want-a-cut/