The House of Representatives has moved to defund the controversial civil forfeiture practice known as “adoptive” seizures. Last week, lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to approve three amendments to the Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act, all of which would prevent federal funds from being used to implement Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ July order to restart adoptive forfeitures. This makes the 2018 appropriations bill—which passed the House last Thursday—one of the most significant federal legislative actions on civil forfeiture in years. Adoptive forfeiture is the process by which property allegedly tied to criminal wrongdoing can be seized by state and local law enforcement officials, and then handed off to federal authorities for forfeiture under comparatively lax federal law. If a forfeiture is successful, the original seizing agency can expect to receive up to 80 percent of the resulting proceeds through the “equitable sharing” program. This program has come under tremendous pressure in recent years as states began to rein in civil forfeiture, afford property owners greater due process protections, and restrict how much forfeiture revenue may be retained by local law enforcement authorities and how those funds may be spent. Critics contend that adoptive forfeitures made it all too easy for local and state agencies to circumvent these protections. One 2011 study concluded that an inverse relationship exists between state forfeiture laws and federal equitable sharing payments—that is, the more a state attempts to limit police self-financing, the more agencies turn to federal forfeiture to make up the shortfalls...more
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