Guest Post: Civil Asset Forfeiture Unjustly Targets the Poor

by Julian Adorney

Income mobility in the United States has stagnated, a fact that hurts the poor most of all. If President Trump wishes to keep his promises to help low-income Americans escape poverty, he should instruct his administration to jettison, rather than expand, non-criminal asset forfeiture.

Non-criminal asset forfeiture lets government agents seize Americans’ assets (cash, but also cars and even houses) on the mere suspicion that they were involved in a crime. Asset forfeiture is intended to deprive criminals of their ill-gotten gains, but frequently enables police to take the property of Americans who remain innocent in the eyes of the law.

According to a Department of Justice report, they’ve seized $29 billion from 2007-2016 on the federal level. Twenty-three percent of this has been administrative asset forfeiture, meaning that the seizure was less than $500,000 and the victims were never convicted of—or often even charged with—a crime.

Administrative asset forfeiture alone thus translates to takings of $667 million per year. Because asset forfeiture has risen dramatically in the past decade, administrative asset seizure is likely to pass $4 billion during Trump’s first term if left unchecked.

This Injustice Hurts the Poor Most
Asset forfeiture primarily targets the poor. Most forfeitures are for small amounts: in 2012, the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm that has focused heavily on asset forfeiture, analyzed forfeiture in 10 states and found that the median value of assets seized ranged from $451 (Minnesota) to $2,048 (Utah). Given that law enforcement routinely takes everything they find in a forfeiture case, these small values suggest the relative poverty of the victims.

The procedural hurdles for challenging asset forfeiture also mean that poor people are less able to get their money back. The average forfeiture challenge requires four weekdays in court; missing four days of work can be a prohibitive expense for Americans living paycheck to paycheck. Additionally, claims are challenged in civil court, where the right to counsel doesn’t apply, meaning that claimants need to hire their own lawyer.

Asset forfeiture is especially dangerous for the unbanked, because police and federal agents consider high amounts of cash to be suspect. 

In 2013, half of all households with incomes of less than $15,000 were either unbanked or underbanked. In a report on non-criminal asset forfeiture, the Center for American Progress argues that “low-income individuals and communities of color are hit hardest” by forfeiture.

Asset forfeiture functions as a regressive tax, which reduces low-income Americans’ economic mobility. A family that sees their savings wiped out has to start again from the bottom. A person whose cash rent payment is seized may turn to payday loans or the black market, or simply be evicted—none of which are conducive to upward mobility.


Civil Asset Forfeiture Is Just Cruel
Regressive taxation can also reduce high school graduation, as teens are forced to leave school to help make ends meet. In their book “Taxing the Poor,” Newman and O’Brien argue, “For every $100 increase on taxes at the poverty line, we saw…a quarter of a percentage point decrease in high school completion.” Taking money from poor families erodes teens’ futures and reduces intergenerational mobility.

Civil and administrative asset forfeiture also seizes cars, which can rob the poor of their ability to work. According to the Institute for Justice, Texas and Virginia seized 17,000 cars from 2000 to 2017–or about 1,000 per year. The average value of the car was $6,000, again suggesting that this tactic targets the poor.

When families lose their vehicles, their earning potential suffers. In a study on transportation access and economic opportunity, the Urban Institute, a leading liberal think tank, found that “keeping or gaining access to automobiles is positively associated with the likelihood of employment.” Without a car, many people cannot show up to work on time, so they often lose their jobs. Workers without cars also have a smaller geographic range in which they can find a new job.

Asset forfeiture also targets low-income business owners. In 2013, more than half of small business owners only accepted cash payments. These owners are more likely to be low-income, because a greater percentage of the poor are unbanked. A business that caters to white-collar workers is more likely to pay the substantial fees required to accept credit cards, because that’s the payment method its clientele prefers. A business in a poor neighborhood is more likely to get away with only taking cash.

Legal business owners who only accept cash are more likely to be victims of non-criminal asset forfeiture. They are more suspicious to police because of the large amounts of money that they carry. An asset seizure will also probably cost them more than it would a customer; one asset seizure could rob a business owner of a week’s worth of revenue. When every dollar of revenue matters for escaping poverty, asset forfeiture can trap the poor.

Trump promised to drain the swamp and reduce funding for federal agencies in order to help working-class Americans. Civil asset forfeiture enriches agencies like the Internal Revenue Service (which can wipe out citizens’ bank accounts) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (which took in $3.2 billion in civil forfeiture assets since 2007) at the expense of low-income Americans.

Rather than expand the practice, Trump’s Department of Justice should end an institution that punishes the poor and erodes due process.

Reprinted from The Federalist.

Julian Adorney is a Young Voices Advocate. His work has been featured in dozens of outlets, including National Review, Fox News’ Nation, and Lawrence Reed’s best-selling economics anthology Excuse Me, Professor.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Guest Post: Will Hammer on 'Judicial and Police Reform'

(Will Hammer is a candidate for the Virginia General Assembly. He submitted this opinion piece as a guest post to Rick Sincere News & Thoughts.)

------------

Judicial and Police Reform Needed

by Will Hammer

The recent appalling incident that left UVA honor student Martese Johnson bloodied and arrested is yet another example of the apparent increase of excessive force used by police across the country. Unfortunately, this incident is nothing new as police brutality, especially against minorities, has been a widespread problem in this country for a very long time. Technology has just allowed for this issue to come to light, allowing anyone to record high definition video at anytime and anywhere with their phones.

Will Hammer (left) with Robert Sarvis in Buena Vista, September 2014

The news has been peppered with similar incidents over the last year, luckily this one did not end fatally unlike many of the others. While there are discrepancies with what happened leading up to the Michael Brown incident, there is no doubt that the Eric Garner tragedy was unjustified. Technology allowed us to see that Eric Garner did not aggress against the police officers who would go on to put him into a chokehold, resulting in Garner’s death. A good Samaritan filmed the altercation, preventing Eric Garner from becoming just another statistic.

Though film evidence is not available, it appears that Martese did nothing to warrant the excessive force that was used against him. He was not intoxicated nor did he present a fake ID, though, even if he did, that still would not warrant the actions of the ABC police. With that thought in mind, it makes me wonder why a regulatory agency even has law enforcement officers to begin with.

Incidents like this, and the numerous police brutality videos found online, hurt public trust in the police. Law abiding citizens feel anxious and nervous around police officers, worrying if they are unknowingly doing something that would warrant the police officer to ticket or arrest them. Last year I was pulled over for speeding. I was doing 37 in a 35 that just turned into a 25 when the police officer coming the other way flashed his lights. The police officer approached my car with his hand on his gun and kept it there the whole time, barely showing his face by leaning forward. I had my hands on the steering wheel, showed no aggression or agitation. Why was I treated like a criminal? It has become the norm and it’s abhorrent. People of all social backgrounds, ethnicities, sex, and age get the same treatment. There seems to be more and more insulation between law enforcement and the communities; the mantra “to serve and protect”, has become “to fine and arrest”.

So how do we bridge the disconnect between law enforcement and the community? We need judicial and police reform. There needs to be more transparency, less victimless crimes and finable offenses, and better training.

To create more transparency, we must take several steps. First, we need legislation requiring all law enforcement agents to wear body cameras as well as heavy penalties if the cameras, memory cards, or video are tampered. Second, internal affairs is a conflict of interest because they are not an independent department. We need to have an independent organization where citizens can report incidents involving police. Also, there needs to be legislation requiring police officers to file a ‘use of force incident report’ for every matter that requires any force, not just the use of their firearm.

It is said that the average citizen commits 3 felonies daily on average in the US. This statistic is appalling and just shows how ridiculous and numerous laws have become. About ½ of the prison population stems from victimless crimes. Peaceful citizens get locked up for longer sentences than child molesters. It is clear the system is broken. Legalization of marijuana will greatly reduce the military aspect of police, reduce spending, and reduce crime rates. Look at Colorado and the success they have had with legalization. Violent crime is down, more tax money goes to schools; it’s been a huge success.

Finally, police need to be trained and acclimated into their communities. The police officer who pulled me over seemed scared, as if he was waiting for me to attack. Police officers need to be trained to not assume everyone is a violent criminal and to not rush to use their firearms. Police need to be able to protect themselves, obviously, but not to the point where it makes everyone feel like a criminal or in danger from the officer.

In conclusion, there is a rampant issue across the US of excessive force being used by law enforcement and it disproportionately affects black males. This is not a new issue, but rather a problem that has been going unchecked and expanding for decades if not for a century. Apart from that, we have a system where just about every citizen is committing crimes. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world because of this, about half being non-violent. We need serious judicial and police reform to bring about transparency, less victimless crimes and finable offenses, and better training for law enforcement to protect and serve, not fine and arrest.

* * * * * *

Will Hammer is a resident of Staunton. He ran for US Congress last year and is currently seeking the Libertarian Party nomination to run against Dickie Bell for the VA House of Delegates, 20th District.