It is sometimes not as straightforward, as I think we have that in order to prevent people from having enough funds to escape courts, as in, without money it's harder to flee law. Now some middle class criminals might be affected, some high class criminals might have funds around the world in rogue states and might be able to flee anyway, the issue as usual seem to be of the randomers, always taking the biggest hit of any law done to prevent crime
But I think in this case the issue is not the tool to freeze or seize assets in itself, which used pragmatically helps society, is the accountability of those who exploit it
I have vibes regarding this like those who said ok there are some shitty cops who shot people, then let’s defund the police
For seizures of sums of cash as little as $100 (mentioned in the article), I very much doubt that to be true.
> In practice, however, civil forfeiture is often wielded against regular people who aren’t doing anything wrong. In many states the typical cash forfeiture amount is in the hundreds of dollars — $423 in Michigan, or $369 in Pennsylvania, according to the latest data from the Institute for Justice, a law firm that represents forfeiture victims and tracks the practice nationwide. In many cities police departments have been known to make seizures of less than $100 on the flimsiest pretenses, typically concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods.
The usage of 'typical' sounds like they mean 'average', for such precise numbers.
"Although there are accessible statistics of seizures at the federal level, it often happens that the totals of forfeitures from both criminals and innocent owners are combined; for example, one report was that in 2010, government seized $2.5 billion in assets from criminals and innocent owners by forfeiture methods,[16] and the totals of assets seized incorrectly from innocent owners was not separated statistically. Further, since the United States is a federal republic with governments at both the national and state level, there are civil forfeiture seizures at the state level, which are not tracked and recorded in any central database,[12] which make it difficult to make assessments, since state laws and procedures vary widely."
> However, most of the stuff they seize really is crime-related.
Torture might be an effective way to get most criminals to confess and getting a slam dunk conviction when going to trial where a jury may mistakenly exonerate them, but that doesn't mean that it's the _right_ or even _moral_ way to do so.
Further, ask yourself this - what is a crime? Answer - it's whatever the legislature says it is, and as a political body they are influenced by what the dominant group in power wants.
That's because there's too many crimes, mostly relating to drugs. If we were to make caffeine illegal tomorrow then there would be a lot of "crime-related" money seized from the coffee industry, but it's only "crime-related" because we're dumb enough to consider a victimless act a crime.
Technically indiscriminately selling literal poison with a very low LD50 to people with "somewhat" poor impulse control is a victimless crime, sure.
Of course, I guess, fentanyl et al. are a thing because more benign drugs were criminalized for so long. However in no way does that make hard drugs comparable to caffeine though... Do you believe that all substances must be legalized and widely available?
I believe the current system is an abject failure that has seriously curtailed civil liberties, costs an endless fortune of taxpayer money, completely fails to help people who do have serious addiction problems and ruins lives, mostly of more vulnerable people, with fines and criminal records and jail time. It also force people to buy impure drugs, directly resulting in many deaths and accidental overdoses, including a huge part of the fentanyl death toll.
I think most of the popular drugs should be legalized with various levels of access and greater restrictions for the drugs we known are most prone to serious abuse, such as opioids and speed (along with nicotine and alcohol). There's simply no reason a grown adult shouldn't be able to smoke a joint or eat some mushrooms or do some lines of coke in their own home - and buy them safely and legally without undue fear of impurities.
> I think most of the popular drugs should be legalized
Under what circumstances do you think fentanyl could be legalized?
Opioids are already legal to some degree, it's just over-prescribing them had a massive backlash and shifting to a completely opposite direction (not that addiction was ever technically a valid reason to get a prescription).
> There's simply no reason a grown adult shouldn't be able to smoke a joint
Yes, but you still agree we have to draw a line at some point. How do we handle substances that end up being on the other side of it? Do we just ignore them and their distribution not to "curtail civil liberties"?
> who do have serious addiction problems and ruins lives, mostly of more vulnerable people, with fines and criminal records and jail time
That's awful and should not happen. But is it still that widespread these days? Many(most?) places just seem to ignore addicts and abandon them without providing any real support.
> along with nicotine and alcohol
What's wrong with nicotine? It's mostly harmless (even if quite addictive) in it's pure form...
Anyway if you actually consider even alcohol to be on the other side of that line, I'm not quite sure what you're proposing? If weed and mushrooms are legalized we're still left with 95%+ of all drugs related problems we had before that.
