New at Reason: Radley Balko on the Government’s License to Steal

October 21, 2010

In the late 1990s, after a public backlash against the use of civil asset forfeiture to take money and property from innocent people, seven states passed laws assigning all proceeds from such forfeitures to public schools or the general fund instead of police departments and prosecutors’ offices. The idea was to reduce the incentive to seize assets from innocent owners and to target people based on the value of their property instead of the seriousness of their crimes. Senior Editor Radley Balko points out that Indiana’s law would be more effective if it weren’t ignored.

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