Sessions ' Civil Forfeiture Memo: It ' s Not Just the Money

Yesterday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reanimated the suspended Department of Justice program that allows local police tocircumvent their own state laws to profit from seizing property from individuals who have not been charged, much less convicted, of a crime. Over atDemocracy: A Journal of Ideas, I wrote that this may have the unintended consequence of increasing racial profiling on American roads:Virtually  everywhere police stops are counted and measured demographically, black and/or Hispanic drivers are over-represented in those pulled over and subsequently searched for contraband. The  vast majority of searches of drivers across ethnicities come up empty, and statistics show that black and Hispanic drivers who are searched are less likely to be carrying contraband than whites who are similarly searched.Stopping drivers to search for drugs and drug proceeds is much cheaper than developing leads and building cases against large drug organizations through buy-and-bust operations or long-term stings, making interdiction through traffic stops all the more appealing. For that reason, while the disparity in stops almost certainly exists independent of asset forfeiture laws, increasing the use of forfeiture will likely result in an increase of racial profiling.  These traffic stops that officers initiate to search  a car aren’t the typical traffic stops many Americans have experienced. These stops are intrusive, probing, invasive interrogations that are designed t...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs