The injustice of "policing for profit" -- and how to end it

In 2007, my colleagues and I began researching civil forfeiture. At the time, very few people knew anything about it. The only published materials were a handful of articles in academic journals and a smattering of legal treatises. So when we published the first edition of Policing for Profit in 2010, it quickly became the go-to source for background information about civil forfeiture, data at the state and national levels and much more. There was literally nothing like it then, and there still isn’t today.

Forfeiture proponents assert civil forfeiture is an essential crime-fighting tool. Opponents argue it’s primarily a revenue-generating device with little effect on crime. Who’s right? In 2019, Seattle University economist Brian Kelly became the first person to study this important question. He used years of data and sophisticated econometrics to find the answer, but don’t let the economics wizardry scare you off — this report is highly readable, perhaps even quotable.

Did you know the IRS can seize your entire bank account just because you appear to make a habit of depositing or withdrawing amounts of less than $10,000? Neither did I until people it happened to began telling their stories, inspiring this study. Their cases and this report led to an explosive New York Times frontpage story (“Law Lets IRS Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required”), congressional hearings, and policy changes within the IRS. Read the report that started it all.

Civil forfeiture gives local, state and federal law enforcement agencies tremendous power to seize and keep your property. It seems like the type of thing that should require copious amounts of public transparency to protect against abuse. Yet, as this report shows, many states require no record-keeping or public reporting at all about civil forfeiture. And of those that do, the requirements are often pitiful. Check out the only report of its kind to see your state’s grades.

Civil forfeiture laws in most states, and at the federal level, allow law enforcement officials to keep some or even all of the property they seize and forfeit. Arguably, this creates a perverse incentive and a conflict of interest that can lead to abuse. To the extent it does, forfeiture proponents claim it’s just a problem of a few bad apples. Is it?


Chapman University economist Bart Wilson and attorney Michael Preciado used cutting-edge experimental economics to study how people respond to the incentives baked into forfeiture. The authors conclude, “The problem with civil forfeiture is not one of ‘bad apples’ but bad rules that encourage bad behavior — it is not the players, but the game ... When civil forfeiture puts people in a position to choose between benefiting themselves or the overall public, people choose themselves.”


Video games, avatars, conflict, treachery — this report has it all.

Civil forfeiture is legal but, at its core, unethical. In this short article I wrote for the United Nations magazine F3 Freedom from Fear, I describe what civil forfeiture is, how it works in practice and why it is unethical. The magazine editor asked me to write this article because other countries have similar laws and are beginning to increase their use of them. If you are looking for a short, readable and informative description of civil forfeiture to share with a friend, this will do nicely.

John Oliver. Civil forfeiture. Margarita machines. Guest appearance by Jeff Goldblum. Need I say more?