More than $6 billion in forfeited funds has been shared with state and local law enforcement since fiscal year 2000, and over $4 billion has been returned to crime victims during that same period, according to the report from the department's inspector general. These seizures are all legal under the controversial practice of civil asset forfeiture, which allows authorities to take cash, contraband and property from people suspected of crime. But the Inspector General's report "raises serious concerns that maybe real purpose here is not to fight crime, but to seize and forfeit property," said Darpana Sheth, senior attorney of the Institute for Justice, a civil liberties law form that has fought for forfeiture reform. To decrease the number of unnecessary seizures, the report recommends collecting data to evaluate whether seizure is necessary, reviewing seizure practices, providing more seizure and forfeiture training to DEA officers, and monitoring the recommendations in Attorney General Eric Holder's 2015 order on the same subject. The inspector general's office reviewed 100 cash seizure investigations involving the Drug Enforcement Administration but said the DEA could verify that only 44 had advanced or been related to ongoing investigations, resulted in the development of new investigations or led to arrests or prosecutions. "When seizure and administrative forfeitures do not ultimately advance an investigation or prosecution, law enforcement creates the appearance, and risks the reality, that it is more interested in seizing and forfeiting cash than advancing an investigation or prosecution," the inspector general's office wrote. The program, long criticized by advocacy groups and members of Congress concerned about oversight, permits law enforcement to take possession of cash and property seized during investigations. In a written response to the Inspector General, the Department of Justice said it had "significant concerns" with the report, noting that global criminal enterprises launder trillions of dollars annually and calling asset forfeiture "a critical tool to fight the current heroin and opioid epidemic that is raging in the United States."
– Since 2007, the DEA has seized a total of $3.2 billion in cash from people suspected of being involved in the drug trade but never charged with a crime, the Washington Post reports. That statistic comes from a Department of Justice watchdog's report released Wednesday. According to the AP, the inspector general reviewed 100 cases of civil asset forfeiture at random and found only 44 were verifiably connected to an ongoing investigation, responsible for starting a new investigation, or led to arrests or prosecutions. That means that 56% of the time "there was no discernible connection between the seizure and the advancement of law enforcement efforts," Business Insider quotes from the report. Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement to seize cash, homes, cars, and more without criminal or civil charges or judicial review. Departments can then keep the forfeitures to pad their budgets unless people win a challenge in court. The report found that 81% of the DEA's seizures since 2007 fall under this category. The report says this "creates the appearance, and risks the reality, that [law enforcement] is more interested in seizing and forfeiting cash than advancing an investigation or prosecution." For example, a police department in Florida arrested 84 people, seizing $49 million in cash, without ever filing a charge. The DOJ's criminal division says the report is misleading and uses bad data.