Civil Asset Theft
Civil Asset Theft
J. Bradley Jansen
June 21, 2001
Civil asset forfeiture is in the news again. The American Civil Liberties Union is running an advertising campaign on the issue. Their ad shows the recognizable “Uncle Sam Wants You” picture with a twist; he’s pointing a gun at us with a caption that reads:
“I want YOUR money, jewelry, car, boat and house. Thanks to civil asset forfeiture laws, possessions that you took a lifetime to acquire can be taken in the blink of an eye, or more accurately, the flash of a badge. Probable cause. That’s all police are required to show before they can seize everything from family photos to your life savings. The forfeiture laws were designed as a new government weapon in the “war on drugs.” But they’ve done little more than provide law enforcement with a license to steal. After all, who can you call when the police are the ones robbing you?”
The ad then asks for support and urges readers to visit their web site at www.aclu.org/forfeiture to learn more about the issue. They explain in part, “Allowing authorities to take away and sell a person’s vehicle or home without proving that he or she has done something wrong flies in the face of basic American values,” said Graham Boyd, the Director of the ACLU’s Drug Policy Litigation Project. “Forfeiting a person’s property without a conviction undermines the bedrock principle of our legal system: that a person is innocent until proven guilty.”
In the last Congress, Rep. Henry Hyde worked with a very broad coalition of groups and members of Congress to pass an important first step to asset forfeiture reform. At that time, Mr. Hyde was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Let’s hope the new chairmen of the House and Senate committees will continue this important work.
Civil asset forfeiture reform is a great issue that brings together the left, the right and libertarians. Conservatives can even joke that this may be a watershed issue–liberals are standing up and advocating respect for property rights rather than higher taxes. Let’s hope the new Bush Administration has the foresight to seize the opportunity. With this issue, he can govern in the bipartisan manner he says he wants to do.