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<blockquote data-quote="rickyb" data-source="post: 2983000" data-attributes="member: 56035">wow you cant make this stuff up!<a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/07/20/jeff-sessions-wants-to-make-legalized-theft-great-again/" target="_blank">Jeff Sessions Wants to Make “Legalized Theft” Great Again</a>The practice — known as “civil asset forfeiture” — became widespread as part of the drug crackdown in the 1980s, after Congress passed a <a href="http://democracyjournal.org/arguments/criminal-justice-on-a-hunch/" target="_blank">law</a> in 1984 that allowed the Department of Justice to keep the property it seized. At the time, forfeiture was billed as a way to undermine the resources of large criminal enterprises, but law enforcement saw it as a way to underwrite their budgets, and have overwhelmingly gone after people without the means to challenge the seizures in court.The practice has become so widespread that in 2014, law enforcement officers <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/?utm_term=.6053b89d8b18" target="_blank">took more property</a> from American citizens than all home and office burglaries combined....“These purported safeguards amount to little more than self-policing, and we all know how well that works,” said Kanya Bennett, a lawyer for the ACLU that focuses on criminal justice issues. “We can’t trust the very law enforcement agencies that stand to profit from a forfeiture to police themselves.”</blockquote>

[QUOTE="rickyb, post: 2983000, member: 56035"] wow you cant make this stuff up! [URL="https://theintercept.com/2017/07/20/jeff-sessions-wants-to-make-legalized-theft-great-again/"]Jeff Sessions Wants to Make “Legalized Theft” Great Again[/URL] The practice — known as “civil asset forfeiture” — became widespread as part of the drug crackdown in the 1980s, after Congress passed a [URL='http://democracyjournal.org/arguments/criminal-justice-on-a-hunch/']law[/URL] in 1984 that allowed the Department of Justice to keep the property it seized. At the time, forfeiture was billed as a way to undermine the resources of large criminal enterprises, but law enforcement saw it as a way to underwrite their budgets, and have overwhelmingly gone after people without the means to challenge the seizures in court. The practice has become so widespread that[B] in 2014, law enforcement officers [URL='https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/?utm_term=.6053b89d8b18']took more property[/URL] from American citizens than all home and office burglaries combined. [/B] ...“These purported safeguards amount to little more than self-policing, and we all know how well that works,” said Kanya Bennett, a lawyer for the ACLU that focuses on criminal justice issues. “We can’t trust the very law enforcement agencies that stand to profit from a forfeiture to police themselves.”[B] [/B] [/QUOTE]

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