4 ms·

oh! It gets worse. The value of goods taken yearly through civil forfeiture is greater than the value of goods reported stolen. https://www.washingtonpost.com/

by joshAg 5y ago

oh! It gets worse. The value of goods taken yearly through civil forfeiture is greater than the value of goods reported stolen. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...

realPubkey 5y ago
Well there are way more and easier ways to get illegal money without directly stealing it.
sudosysgen 5y ago
Similarly, after civil asset forfeiture the #2 form of theft is wage theft. EDIT : I've been corrected by someone below - wage theft is the #1 form of theft, civil asset forfeiture is #2
- pope_meat 5y ago
  But let's have a moral panic about the "organized gangs robbing Walgreens" instead, perhaps 67 news stories a day about it?
  - Aerroon 5y ago
    Libertarians have been making noise about this issue for years/decades, but few people seem to care.
  - twirlock 5y ago
    The organized gangs of wall greens don't carry guns and threaten to shoot people for noncompliance.
  - d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
    If it's really that bad that problem will just solve itself: they'll just close all the stores.
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    We'll save the moral panic for when those businesses inevitably leave the neighborhood and create "food deserts". You know, after the damage is already done.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      They're not going to leave until it threatens their profit line, and even then others will grow to fill their place. Food deserts aren't and never were created by shoplifting.
      - wearywanderer 5y ago
        > They're not going to leave until it threatens their profit line, It does. > and even then others will grow to fill their place. Filling their place will be family operated corner shops that charge 3x as much. I have lived in such neighborhoods and seen it myself. You can't gaslight me sudosysgen.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        It will never do so - they will simply increase prices, and not by 3x. I'm not gaslighting you. There are many ways to make a grocery store for produce where people can't shoplift. Good luck stealing potatoes from a farmer's market. And they're not more expensive either. I live in such a neighborhood and I can see it.
- joshAg 5y ago
  I think you have those reversed. Wage theft is like $9.2 billion [1], and civil forfeiture is like $68 Billion total across 20 years [2] [1]: https://www.nelp.org/publication/forced-arbitration-cost-workers-in-low-paid-jobs-9-2-billion-in-stolen-wages-in-2019/ https://www.nelp.org/publication/forced-arbitration-cost-wor... [2]: https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit-3/ https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit-3/
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Huh, you're right. I'll try to correct my comment!
jjeaff 5y ago
And it gets worse again. Federal, state, and local police often get to keep the seized property for the benefit of the police. So they are incentivized to seize property. Makes you wonder why they are even wasting their time with all the speed traps and traffic ticket quotas.
- joshAg 5y ago
  Because that's how they manufacture probable cause. If they can manufacture probable cause, they can search the car for things that are valuable enough to justify the paperwork.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  > And it gets worse again. Of course! We could go on for ages. And if you want to go on for ages, I recommend Reason, the strident Libertarian rag — not because I want to be a cheerleader for the libertarians (ick) but because they've been covering this topic since March 1989 (!) (!!) (!!!) (but more regularly and in more depth since 2007.) Lots of fun reading awaits you: https://reason.com/tag/civil-asset-forfeiture/ https://reason.com/tag/civil-asset-forfeiture/
- DaftDank 5y ago
  There's a scene in "True Detective" season 1, where one of sheriff's in the show is driving a Maserati to the country club he golfs at, and says he, "Seized it off some good old boy last year." I'd been aware of civil forfeiture for years before seeing that show, but just the way it was presented really stuck with me for some reason; just how much the system can be abused by "bad actors."
dvt 5y ago
The suggestion that ill-gotten items must have been stolen is just flat-out wrong and illustrative of your typical modern-day "reddit lawyers." For example, one could buy lawn mowers with drug money (to resell them). Those lawn mowers weren't stolen, but they would still qualify for civil forfeiture. Not saying civil forfeiture has no problems, but it's a complex mechanism that people don't quite grasp (much like any other hot-button social issue).
- twirlock 5y ago
  It's actually not complex at all.
- yunohn 5y ago
  I’m pretty sure you’ve misunderstood. The implication here is that the FBI has “stolen” more assets than burglars have.
  - tomerv 5y ago
    Yes, but the comparison is useless. Presumably, at least some of that civil forfeiture is "legitimate", i.e. illegal gains. So what are you actually comparing here?
    - yunohn 5y ago
      I was correcting the commenter; not judging the value of the comparison - as weird as it is that civil forfeiture is more rampant than burglary.
  - joshAg 5y ago
    They're saying that the total amount of stolen good isn't an upper bound on things that could be legitimately forfeited, because there's other ways to colors goods enough that they become subject to forfeiture. But that wasn't my argument or point. Like how you put it, it's that the scope of forfeitures is bigger than stolen goods. The comparison is only useful to help give a size of the problem. The critique is in 2 parts: 1, at least a significant portion of civil forfeitures are illegitimate, if not most of them and 2 this isn't a small problem but instead on the same order as stolen property.
tomerv 5y ago
Comparing the amount of money seized by civil forfeiture to the amount of money stolen by criminals is like comparing the number of people in jail to the number of people enslaved by human traffickers. The institutional systems tend to be much larger, and they will always be abused and will hurt innocents (e.g. the war on drugs), but this doesn't say anything about whether they are good or bad as a whole (few people would suggest closing all jails).

by joshAg 5y ago

realPubkey 5y ago

Well there are way more and easier ways to get illegal money without directly stealing it.

sudosysgen 5y ago

Similarly, after civil asset forfeiture the #2 form of theft is wage theft. EDIT : I've been corrected by someone below - wage theft is the #1 form of theft, civil asset forfeiture is #2

pope_meat 5y ago
But let's have a moral panic about the "organized gangs robbing Walgreens" instead, perhaps 67 news stories a day about it?
- Aerroon 5y ago
  Libertarians have been making noise about this issue for years/decades, but few people seem to care.
- twirlock 5y ago
  The organized gangs of wall greens don't carry guns and threaten to shoot people for noncompliance.
- d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
  If it's really that bad that problem will just solve itself: they'll just close all the stores.
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  We'll save the moral panic for when those businesses inevitably leave the neighborhood and create "food deserts". You know, after the damage is already done.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    They're not going to leave until it threatens their profit line, and even then others will grow to fill their place. Food deserts aren't and never were created by shoplifting.
    - wearywanderer 5y ago
      > They're not going to leave until it threatens their profit line, It does. > and even then others will grow to fill their place. Filling their place will be family operated corner shops that charge 3x as much. I have lived in such neighborhoods and seen it myself. You can't gaslight me sudosysgen.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        It will never do so - they will simply increase prices, and not by 3x. I'm not gaslighting you. There are many ways to make a grocery store for produce where people can't shoplift. Good luck stealing potatoes from a farmer's market. And they're not more expensive either. I live in such a neighborhood and I can see it.
joshAg 5y ago
I think you have those reversed. Wage theft is like $9.2 billion [1], and civil forfeiture is like $68 Billion total across 20 years [2] [1]: https://www.nelp.org/publication/forced-arbitration-cost-workers-in-low-paid-jobs-9-2-billion-in-stolen-wages-in-2019/ https://www.nelp.org/publication/forced-arbitration-cost-wor... [2]: https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit-3/ https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit-3/
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Huh, you're right. I'll try to correct my comment!

jjeaff 5y ago

And it gets worse again. Federal, state, and local police often get to keep the seized property for the benefit of the police. So they are incentivized to seize property. Makes you wonder why they are even wasting their time with all the speed traps and traffic ticket quotas.

joshAg 5y ago
Because that's how they manufacture probable cause. If they can manufacture probable cause, they can search the car for things that are valuable enough to justify the paperwork.
fennecfoxen 5y ago
> And it gets worse again. Of course! We could go on for ages. And if you want to go on for ages, I recommend Reason, the strident Libertarian rag — not because I want to be a cheerleader for the libertarians (ick) but because they've been covering this topic since March 1989 (!) (!!) (!!!) (but more regularly and in more depth since 2007.) Lots of fun reading awaits you: https://reason.com/tag/civil-asset-forfeiture/ https://reason.com/tag/civil-asset-forfeiture/
DaftDank 5y ago
There's a scene in "True Detective" season 1, where one of sheriff's in the show is driving a Maserati to the country club he golfs at, and says he, "Seized it off some good old boy last year." I'd been aware of civil forfeiture for years before seeing that show, but just the way it was presented really stuck with me for some reason; just how much the system can be abused by "bad actors."

dvt 5y ago

The suggestion that ill-gotten items must have been stolen is just flat-out wrong and illustrative of your typical modern-day "reddit lawyers." For example, one could buy lawn mowers with drug money (to resell them). Those lawn mowers weren't stolen, but they would still qualify for civil forfeiture. Not saying civil forfeiture has no problems, but it's a complex mechanism that people don't quite grasp (much like any other hot-button social issue).

twirlock 5y ago
It's actually not complex at all.
yunohn 5y ago
I’m pretty sure you’ve misunderstood. The implication here is that the FBI has “stolen” more assets than burglars have.
- tomerv 5y ago
  Yes, but the comparison is useless. Presumably, at least some of that civil forfeiture is "legitimate", i.e. illegal gains. So what are you actually comparing here?
  - yunohn 5y ago
    I was correcting the commenter; not judging the value of the comparison - as weird as it is that civil forfeiture is more rampant than burglary.
- joshAg 5y ago
  They're saying that the total amount of stolen good isn't an upper bound on things that could be legitimately forfeited, because there's other ways to colors goods enough that they become subject to forfeiture. But that wasn't my argument or point. Like how you put it, it's that the scope of forfeitures is bigger than stolen goods. The comparison is only useful to help give a size of the problem. The critique is in 2 parts: 1, at least a significant portion of civil forfeitures are illegitimate, if not most of them and 2 this isn't a small problem but instead on the same order as stolen property.

tomerv 5y ago

Comparing the amount of money seized by civil forfeiture to the amount of money stolen by criminals is like comparing the number of people in jail to the number of people enslaved by human traffickers. The institutional systems tend to be much larger, and they will always be abused and will hurt innocents (e.g. the war on drugs), but this doesn't say anything about whether they are good or bad as a whole (few people would suggest closing all jails).