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Criminal charges are filed in relatively few civil forfeiture cases. If civil forfeitures without criminal charges resulted in substantially more losses than b

by nullc 5y ago

Criminal charges are filed in relatively few civil forfeiture cases. If civil forfeitures without criminal charges resulted in substantially more losses than burglaries, would you consider the prior poster's point provisionally made? (I haven't attempted to see if that breakdown can be derived, I suspect it's true, but if you won't find it convincing it isn't worth trying to figure it out. :) )

lostmsu 5y ago
> If civil forfeitures without criminal charges resulted in substantially more losses than burglaries, would you consider the prior poster's point provisionally made? I am unsure about that. I'd argue that one must only include undisputed forfeitures. Despite the arguments about attorney costs, the total sum indicates that most of forfeited property costs much more than the cost of an appeal. Specifically, related quotes from Wikipedia: "From 2005 to 2010, government seizures of assets from both criminals as well as innocent citizens went from $1.25 billion to $2.50 billion" "In 2010, there were 15,000 cases of forfeitures." If you divide $2.5B by 15k cases, you'll get avg. $166k/case, which is far from averages posted above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
- KorematsuFredt 5y ago
  You should look at the median and not average.
  - lostmsu 5y ago
    If you assume that the number above is correct, and there were only 15k forfeitures in 2010, then assuming $3k median forfeiture (actually more than your number), the cases where forfeited money are insufficient to hire a $3k lawyer only amass to $23M of $2.5B total forfeited in 2010. They are also only 1/40 of the amount stolen in burglaries in the same year. And that estimate still assumes all those under $3k forfeitures were baseless.

by nullc 5y ago

lostmsu 5y ago

> If civil forfeitures without criminal charges resulted in substantially more losses than burglaries, would you consider the prior poster's point provisionally made? I am unsure about that. I'd argue that one must only include undisputed forfeitures. Despite the arguments about attorney costs, the total sum indicates that most of forfeited property costs much more than the cost of an appeal. Specifically, related quotes from Wikipedia: "From 2005 to 2010, government seizures of assets from both criminals as well as innocent citizens went from $1.25 billion to $2.50 billion" "In 2010, there were 15,000 cases of forfeitures." If you divide $2.5B by 15k cases, you'll get avg. $166k/case, which is far from averages posted above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...

KorematsuFredt 5y ago
You should look at the median and not average.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  If you assume that the number above is correct, and there were only 15k forfeitures in 2010, then assuming $3k median forfeiture (actually more than your number), the cases where forfeited money are insufficient to hire a $3k lawyer only amass to $23M of $2.5B total forfeited in 2010. They are also only 1/40 of the amount stolen in burglaries in the same year. And that estimate still assumes all those under $3k forfeitures were baseless.