Reason.com

Asset forfeiture programs in the majority of states across the country suffer from a lack of transparency and accountability, leaving the public in the dark about how much property police seize from citizens and where those proceeds go, the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm, said in a report released Tuesday.

According to the report, 26 states have little to no transparency requirements surrounding asset forfeiture, and 14 of those states "do not appear to require any form of property tracking, leaving in doubt even such basic questions as what was seized and how much it was worth, who seized it, when it was seized, where it was seized, and why it was seized." The rest of the states aren't much better.

In recent years, there has been a bipartisan push to roll back civil forfeiture laws, which allow police to seize property suspected of being connected to a crime without ever convicting, or sometimes even charging, the owner. Law enforcement organizations say the laws allow them to target the illicit profits of drug traffickers and organized crime. However, civil liberties groups say the practice is heavily weighted against property owners, who must pay to challenge seizures in court, and creates perverse profit incentives police.

How much money police departments seize, and what they do with it, is a critical question for anyone trying to get a handle on the scope of asset forfeiture. However, while many states have passed bipartisan laws strengthening due process protections for property owners and limiting how police's ability to use forfeiture revenue to fund their departments, transparency requirements appear to have fallen by the wayside.

"Given the vast power forfeiture confers on law enforcement to take and keep property—often without a criminal charge, let alone a conviction—states should hold agencies to high standards of transparency and accountability," Angela C. Erickson, senior research analyst at IJ and co-author of the study, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, most states fail at one or more basic elements of forfeiture transparency." [MORE]