AUSTIN – The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Effective Justice today released a paper by Center Deputy Director Derek Cohen on the need to reform the practice of civil asset forfeiture. The paper, Without Due Process of Law: The Case for Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform, enumerates reforms states may implement to ensure criminals are held accountable for breaking the law while protecting the property rights of innocents.
“The comment period on civil asset forfeiture is over,” said Derek Cohen, deputy director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “This vestigial practice offers zero benefit to public safety and only serves to line the pockets of those trusted to be unbiased arbiters of the law. Many high-profile abuses occur not because the ranks of law enforcement and prosecutors are bad people—quite the opposite. These abuses occur because we have a legal framework in place that creates backwards incentives and unintended consequences. The time to end this incentive scheme is now.”
To read the full report, visit: http://txpo.li/conservative-case-for-reforming-civil-asset-forfeiture
Derek Cohen is deputy director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.