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My understanding is that asset forfeiture came into existence for fairly sensible reasons a few hundred years ago in the days of piracy. The problem we have on
by sliverstorm 12y ago
My understanding is that asset forfeiture came into existence for fairly sensible reasons a few hundred years ago in the days of piracy.
The problem we have on our hands today is asset forfeiture combined with perverse incentives- only recently did the department that did the seizing, get a cut of the assets. Originally it all went straight to the Fed, so there was little incentive for local police departments to shake people down.
- MCRed 12y agoNo, the Asset Forfieture program came into existence in the 1980s as part of the war on drugs. The USA has only existed for a couple hundred years, and the US constitution has as amendment 4 a specific prohibition on these kinds of thefts.
- sliverstorm 12y agoThe early Congress wrote forfeiture laws based on British maritime law to help federal tax collectors collect customs duties, which financed most of the expenses of the federal government in the early days of the republic. Seizures allowed government to confiscate property from citizens who failed to pay taxes or customs duties. The Supreme Court upheld these forfeiture statutes in situations where it was virtually impossible to get hold of guilty persons on the high seas while possible to get hold of their property. During much of the 19th century there was not much attention paid to forfeiture laws. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_...