Asset Forfeiture Laws “Evil” and “Unreformable”, Say Former Justice Department Officials

Last week The Washington Post ran a
series of in-depth articles
on the problems with civil asset forfeiture. Today, two

former justice department officials weighed in on the issue,
calling for the abolition of the program they helped create.

John Yoder and Brad Cates were directors of the Justice
Department’s Asset Forfeiture Office, with a combined tenure
running from 1983 to 1989. As they explain, the program started off
with good intentions, but has turned to be a cure worse than the
disease:

Asset forfeiture was conceived as a way to cut into the profit
motive that fuelled rampant drug trafficking by cartels and other
criminal enterprises, in order to fight the social evils of drug
dealing and abuse. Over time, however, the tactic has turned into
an evil itself, with the corruption it engendered among government
and law enforcement coming to clearly outweigh any benefits.

 Can asset forfeiture be reformed? Yoder and Cates don’t
think so:

The Asset Forfeiture Reform Act was enacted
in 2000 to rein in abuses, but virtually nothing has changed. This
is because civil forfeiture is fundamentally at odds with our
judicial system and notions of fairness. It is unreformable.

Despite its popularity amongst law enforcement, civil asset
forfeiture clearly violates key principles of the U.S. legal
system. It reverses the burden of proof, and violates the principle
that people are innocent until proven guilty.

This opposition from former government officials who helped
implement it is a testament to the harm it causes. It’s just a
shame that their opposition  comes 20 years after their role
in its implementation.

For more about civil asset forfeiture, see “How
Cops Became Robbers” by Reason’s Jacob
Sullum.