Jeff Sessions Backs Civil-Asset Forfeiture to Bipartisan Criticism - The Atlantic:
July 19, 2017 - "Attorney General Jeff Sessions rolled back a series of Obama-era curbs on civil-asset forfeiture on Wednesday, strengthening the federal government’s power to seize cash and property from Americans without first bringing criminal charges against them....
"The directive revives the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program, a controversial process through which state and local police agencies can seize assets, then transfer those seizures to federal control. In doing so, local agencies can skirt some state-level regulations limiting forfeitures. Under the program, the federal government pools the funds derived from the assets and sends 80 percent of them back to the state or local department itself, sometimes evading state laws that say seized assets should go into a state’s general fund....
"A Justice Department inspector general’s report in April found that federal forfeiture programs had taken in almost $28 billion over the past decade, and The Washington Post reported that civil-forfeiture seizures nationwide in 2015 surpassed the collective losses from all burglaries that same year. In its report, the inspector general’s office also raised concerns about how federal agencies take funds, after it found almost half of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s seizures in a random sample weren’t tied to any broader law-enforcement purpose....
"In 2015, Sessions’s predecessor Eric Holder issued a set of modest policy changes that scaled back equitable-sharing proceeds if they were obtained without warrants or criminal charges. Sessions rescinded those policies, but, in a rare nod to critics, imposed some new safeguards on the practice by speeding up notification for owners and requiring more information about the local or state agency’s probable cause for seizing assets....
"Kanya Bennett, a legislative counsel for the ACLU, noted that some polls have shown 80 percent of Americans oppose the practice. 'Civil-asset forfeiture is tantamount to policing for profit, generating millions of dollars annually that the agencies get to keep,' she said in a statement.... 'The only safeguard to protect Americans from civil forfeiture is to eliminate its use altogether,' said Darpana Sheth, a senior attorney at the libertarian nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice, in a statement. 'The Department of Justice’s supposed safeguards amount to little more than window dressing of an otherwise outrageous abuse of power'....
"'This is a troubling decision for the due-process protections afforded to us under the Fourth Amendment as well as the growing consensus we’ve seen nationwide on this issue,' California Representative Darrell Issa, a conservative Republican, said.... 'Instead of revising forfeiture practices in a manner to better protect Americans’ due-process rights, the DOJ seems determined to lose in court before it changes its policies for the better,' concluded Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah. 'Civil-asset forfeiture is unjust and unconstitutional,' Republican Representative Justin Amash of Michigan tweeted. 'It’s a big-government scheme to take people’s property without due process. End it.'"
Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/sessions-forfeiture-justice-department-civil/534168/
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July 19, 2017 - "Attorney General Jeff Sessions rolled back a series of Obama-era curbs on civil-asset forfeiture on Wednesday, strengthening the federal government’s power to seize cash and property from Americans without first bringing criminal charges against them....
"The directive revives the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program, a controversial process through which state and local police agencies can seize assets, then transfer those seizures to federal control. In doing so, local agencies can skirt some state-level regulations limiting forfeitures. Under the program, the federal government pools the funds derived from the assets and sends 80 percent of them back to the state or local department itself, sometimes evading state laws that say seized assets should go into a state’s general fund....
"A Justice Department inspector general’s report in April found that federal forfeiture programs had taken in almost $28 billion over the past decade, and The Washington Post reported that civil-forfeiture seizures nationwide in 2015 surpassed the collective losses from all burglaries that same year. In its report, the inspector general’s office also raised concerns about how federal agencies take funds, after it found almost half of the Drug Enforcement Agency’s seizures in a random sample weren’t tied to any broader law-enforcement purpose....
"In 2015, Sessions’s predecessor Eric Holder issued a set of modest policy changes that scaled back equitable-sharing proceeds if they were obtained without warrants or criminal charges. Sessions rescinded those policies, but, in a rare nod to critics, imposed some new safeguards on the practice by speeding up notification for owners and requiring more information about the local or state agency’s probable cause for seizing assets....
"Kanya Bennett, a legislative counsel for the ACLU, noted that some polls have shown 80 percent of Americans oppose the practice. 'Civil-asset forfeiture is tantamount to policing for profit, generating millions of dollars annually that the agencies get to keep,' she said in a statement.... 'The only safeguard to protect Americans from civil forfeiture is to eliminate its use altogether,' said Darpana Sheth, a senior attorney at the libertarian nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice, in a statement. 'The Department of Justice’s supposed safeguards amount to little more than window dressing of an otherwise outrageous abuse of power'....
"'This is a troubling decision for the due-process protections afforded to us under the Fourth Amendment as well as the growing consensus we’ve seen nationwide on this issue,' California Representative Darrell Issa, a conservative Republican, said.... 'Instead of revising forfeiture practices in a manner to better protect Americans’ due-process rights, the DOJ seems determined to lose in court before it changes its policies for the better,' concluded Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah. 'Civil-asset forfeiture is unjust and unconstitutional,' Republican Representative Justin Amash of Michigan tweeted. 'It’s a big-government scheme to take people’s property without due process. End it.'"
Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/sessions-forfeiture-justice-department-civil/534168/
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