The Ethics and Socioeconomic Issues associated with Civil Forfeiture

By: Adam Herbert Advisor: Dr. Jason Ridge

Overview
Civil Forfeiture in California
Civil judicial forfeiture, as defined by the US Department of (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Rate Initiated1 Value Seized 1
Justice, is an in rem (against the property) action brought in
Constant 3.24 ** 3.13 ** 3.27 ** 15.25 *** 15.37 *** 15.87 ***
court against the property. The property is the defendant and
no criminal charge against the owner is necessary. (0.00) (0.01) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00)
3 Factors that Enable Abuse Property Crime Rate 2 -0.00 * -0.00 -0.00 ** -0.00 *
1) Profit Motive: this is the motive for government agencies to
profit from civil forfeiture. 2) Standard of Proof: civil forfeiture (0.02) (0.07) (0.00) (0.04)
only requires proof by a preponderance of the evidence. 3) Violent Crime Rate2 -0.00 -0.00 -0.01* -0.00
Innocent Owner Burden: the property owner must prove they
are innocent rather than the court proving them guilty. (0.15) (0.92) (0.03) (0.52)
White Population Percentage3 2.29 * 1.91 2.31 * -0.50 -1.45 -0.01
Legalized Marijuana
Many states have, over the last quarter of a century have (0.03) (0.08) (0.03) (0.88) (0.67) (1.00)
passed laws that legalize medical marijuana. California was the
first to pass a medical marijuana law in 1996 that was in direct
Average Household Income4 -0.00* -0.00* -0.00* -0.00 -0.00 -0.00
conflict with federal law concerning the drug. Users are (0.02) (0.04) (0.03) (0.46) (0.47) (0.36)
technically breaking federal law via the Federal Controlled
Observations 58 58 58 58 58 58
Substances Act. Through equitable sharing with a federal 2
agency, state law enforcement agencies are allowed to seize R .18 .12 .18 .19 .13 .20
F 3.84 * 2.50 2.83 * 4.30 ** 2.80 * 3.30 *
the assets of a perfectly legal marijuana businesses.
p-values in parentheses; * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Are Civil Forfeiture Laws Working?
The laws often achieve their intended goals of stopping drug
trafficking and terrorism, but there are aspects of the current
policies that need to change. There is too much free reign and
abuse in the current system. If we look at the table in the right
corner we see that the property crime rate is negatively related
to the rate of asset seizures initiated. This shows that there is
some civil forfeiture abuse taking place because the crime rates
should move in tandem with the rates of asset seizure. With
statistical significance and controlling for the property crime
rate, we can see that as the violent crime rate decreases the
value seized during civil forfeiture actually increases. This is the
case with the property crime rate and the value seized when
controlling for the violent crime rate. As the crime rates decrease
the value seized increases.
Does Civil Forfeiture have a Disparate Impact on Low-Income Americans?
The table above shows us, with statistical significance, that as average household income decreases
the number of asset forfeiture cases initiated increases. If we compare individual counties with
similar crime rates we see that counties with higher incomes have less civil forfeiture. If we compare
Santa Clara County to Solano County we see that both have property crime rates of 80-100, but Santa
Clara has an average household income of around $120,000 which is far greater than Solanos
$83,000. Santa Clara has a much smaller rate of civil forfeiture, sitting at 1.24, whereas Solano has a
rate of civil forfeiture near 28.
Is Civil Forfeiture a Civil Rights Issue?
In the table above we can see that there is a positive, statistically significant relationship between the
white population percentage and the rate of cases initiated when taking into account the property
crime rate and the violent crime rate. The rate of civil forfeiture is positively related to the white
population, therefore there is a lower rate of civil forfeiture cases in populations with higher numbers
of minorities.