Jeff Sessions Is Bringing Back Civil Forfeiture with a Bang

http://billmoyers.com/story/jeff-sessions-bringing-back-civil-forfeiture-bang/
"In mid-July Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a policy rollback that’s getting criticism from both sides of the aisle, and the center, too. As The Washington Post notes undoing this Obama-administration policy is a big deal — and means big money. Known as “adoptive forfeiture,” the program — which gives police departments greater leeway to seize property of those suspected of a crime, even if they’re never charged with or convicted of one — was a significant source of revenue for local law enforcement. In the 12 months before Attorney General Eric Holder shut down the program in 2015, state and local authorities took in $65 million that they shared with federal agencies, according to an analysis of federal data by the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that represents forfeiture defendants. President Trump even mentioned the process in a now somewhat infamous exchange with Texas law enforcement officials when he vowed to “destroy” a state lawmaker that stood in the way of asset seizures. Civil asset forfeiture has become increasingly controversial, especially because of the extremely limited chance to appeal the proceedings. And then there’s the fact that you don’t have to be convicted of a crime to be subject to civil forfeiture — it’s the property that is at issue. The Institute for Justice found in a 2015 report that between 1997 and 2013, 87 percent of the Department of Justice’s forfeitures did not require any criminal charge or conviction."