Civil Asset Forfeiture Laws and Equitable Sharing Activity by the Police

• Date: 01 February 2018
• Author: William D. Hicks,Tomislav V. Kovandzic,Jefferson E. Holcomb,Michele Bisaccia Meitl,Marian R. Williams
• Published date: 01 February 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12341

RESEARCH ARTICLE

CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE LAWS

Civil Asset Forfeiture Laws and Equitable

Sharing Activity by the Police

Jeerson E. Holcomb

Marian R. Williams

William D. Hicks

Appalachian State University

TomislavV. Kovandzic

Michele Bisaccia Meitl

University of Texas-Dallas

Research Summary

For severaldecades, critics have argued that civil forfeiture laws create incentives for law

enforcement to increase departmental revenue by “policing for profit.” By using data

on federal equitable sharing payments to nearly 600 local law enforcement agencies

between 2000 and 2012, we examine the relationship between the characteristics of

state forfeiture laws and equitable sharing payments to local agencies. Our results

indicate that agencies in states with state laws that are more restrictive or less rewarding

to police collect more in federal equitable sharing. This finding supports the critics’

argument that police behavior in regard to forfeiture activities is influenced by the

financia l rewards and b urdens inv olved.

Policy Implications

Our results reveal that the findings of investigative journalism and case study research,

that is, that police forfeiture activities are influenced by financial rewards, may be

more generalizable to law enforcement than previously thought. Despite recent state-

level reforms, federal equitable sharing and most state forfeiture laws provide limited

due process protections and have minimal accountability or reporting requirements.

Direct correspondence to Jeff Holcomb, Department of Government and Justice Studies, Appalachian State

University, ASU Box 32107, 352 Anne Belk Hall, Boone, NC 28608 (e-mail: holcombje@appstate.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12341 C2018 American Society of Criminology 101

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 17 rIssue 1

Research Article Civil Asset Forfeiture Laws

Concerns about the impact of civil forfeiture practices on perceptions of procedural

justice and police legitimacy are discussed, and possible policy reforms are reviewed.

Asset forfeiture by the police has been one of the most scrutinized criminal justice

issues in the past decade, with major expos´

es in the The New Yorker (Stillman,

2013), The Washington Post (Sallah, O’Harrow, Rich, and Silverman, 2014), and

The Miami Herald (Sallah, 2015), among many others. In addition, practitioners at public

policy organizations and think tanks have recently published major critiques of forfeiture

laws and abuses (e.g., American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU], n.d.; Carpenter, Knepper,

Erickson, and McDonald, 2015; Drug Policy Alliance, 2015; Williams, Holcomb, Ko-

vandzic, and Bullock, 2010). This attention has spilled over into popular culture, with

shows such as Last Week Tonight and The Daily Show airing stories highlighting forfeiture

practices by the police. The research on police forfeiture activity has been primarily subject

to investigations of single jurisdictions or agencies (e.g., Drug Policy Alliance, 2015; Miller

and Selva, 1994; Thompson, 2012; Vecchi and Sigler, 2001). There has been less effort

to determine whether there is a more generalizable relationship between a state’s forfeiture

laws and the actions of law enforcement agencies in those jurisdictions (but see Holcomb,

Kovandzic, and Williams, 2011; Worrall and Kovandzic, 2008). We seek to fill this im-

portant gap in the research by using data from a substantially longer period of time and

engaging in more robust analyses of data than is currently found in the literature.

Overview of Asset Forfeiture Laws

Every state and the federal government allow for the forfeiture of an offender’s assets

if the state can connect the assets with a crime for which the offender was convicted

(Edgeworth, 2008). Because criminal forfeitures require a criminal conviction, they are

rarely controversial. Most states and the federal government, however, also allow for civil

asset forfeiture (Carpenter et al., 2015).1Originally designed to address piracy under early

American maritime law, modern civil forfeiture laws received a renewed purpose under

federal anticrime and drug legislation, such as the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention

and Control Act of 1970 during the 1980s (Blumenson and Nilsen, 1998; Carpenter et al.,

2015; Levy, 1996). Civil forfeiture laws allow law enforcement to seize, and eventually

to have declared forfeit, property thought to be associated with criminal activity. Because

these are considered civil actions against property rather than criminal actions against an

individual, substantially fewer due process protections are offered to property owners (for

reviews and critiques of this aspect of civil forfeiture laws, see Hyde, 1995; Jensen and

Gerber, 1996; Keller and Wright, 2004; Pimentel, 2012; Rosenburg, 1988). Importantly,

1. During the time period under study, only Wisconsin and North Carolina required a criminal conviction

for asset forfeiture.

102 Criminology & Public Policy