The Justice Department declared recently that it will continue a controversial law enforcement practice known as the Equitable Sharing Program, which allows police officers to seize cash and property from people who are neither convicted nor charged for a crime.
Last December, the Department of Justice announced that it was indefinitely suspending its equitable sharing asset forfeiture program as a result of budget cuts in last year’s spending bill. The announcement was celebrated by civil liberties advocates. Unfortunately, these celebrations were short-lived:
The Department of Justice is pleased to announce that, effective immediately, the Department is resuming Equitable Sharing payments to State, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies. As you know, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 included a $746 million permanent reduction, or ‘rescission,’ that, when combined with the additional rescission of $458 million contained in the Consolidated Appropriations Act signed into law in December 2015, reduced Asset Forfeiture Program funds by $1.2 billion. Those rescissions threatened the financial solvency of the Assets Forfeiture Fund, and forced the Department to take cost-cutting steps across all discretionary programs, including on December 21, 2015, the deferral of Equitable Sharing payments.
Criminal asset forfeiture vs civil asset forfeiture
It is important to note the distinction between criminal asset forfeiture and civil asset forfeiture. Criminal asset forfeiture consists of taking items from people who have been charged with a crime, whereas civil asset forfeiture consists of action against the property itself because it may have been used in a crime.
Police seized $3.9 billion in civil asset forfeiture in 2014 but only seized $697 million in criminal asset forfeiture. This goes against both Fourth and Fifth Amendments because it violates the search and seizure clause and takes property away from a person without due process, explained Taylor Millard at Hot Air.
Studies have shown that the practice has been on the rise in recent years, prompting many people to wonder if police departments are more concerned about making a profit than they are about justice. The federal program allows local police officers to seize property under federal, instead of state, forfeiture law.
Local police departments are able to tiptoe around state restrictions by participating in the federal program. Under the federal law, police departments are allowed to keep up to 80 percent of the assets they seize.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation claims asset forfeiture helps law enforcement mitigate, “incentive for illegal conduct…[and] takes the profit out of crime by helping to eliminate the ability of the offender to command resources necessary to continue illegal activities.”
Outrage ensues among civil liberty groups
On the other hand, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has pressed that the laws “create perverse, unfair, and unconstitutional incentives for law enforcement to build multi-million dollar slush funds. They spend this money virtually at will, with no meaningful oversight.” The ACLU added that such practices are “disproportionately target communities of color.”
Among other organizations disappointed by the Equitable Sharing Program’s reinstatement, Jordan Richardson, senior policy analyst at the criminal justice reform group Generation Opportunity, said in a statement:
“There was hardly time to celebrate the suspension of the Equitable Sharing Program before the government felt the need to put its hand back in the cookie jar at the expense of our civil rights. It’s unjust for the government to seize assets from people who are not charged with a crime. It’s disappointing to see a White House that claims to be a champion of criminal justice reform reinstate a program that so clearly works against it.”
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