Jeff Sessions and Civil Forfeiture - WSJ editorial
If Democrats or fellow Republicans are looking for a legitimate area to probe, they should explore Sessions' views on government’s use of civil forfeiture. The all-too-common practice allows law enforcement to take private property without due process and has become a cash cow for state and local police and prosecutors. Under a federal program called “equitable sharing,” local law enforcement can team up with federal authorities to seize property in exchange for 80% of the proceeds.
Assets are often seized—and never returned—without any judicial process or court supervision. Unlike criminal forfeiture, civil forfeiture doesn’t require a criminal conviction or even charges. According to the Virginia-based Institute for Justice, which tracks forfeitures, 13% of all forfeitures done by the Justice Department between 1997 and 2013 were in criminal cases while 87% were civil forfeitures. And 88% of those forfeitures were done by an administrative agency, not a court.
Civil-rights activists have campaigned for years to end forfeiture abuses. But in a 2015 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Sessions defended the practice. He said he doesn’t “think it’s wrong to—for federal government to adopt state cases” and added that “taking and seizing and forfeiting, through a government judicial process, illegal gains from criminal enterprises is not wrong.”
Mr. Sessions said he was “very unhappy” with criticism of a program that mostly took money from people who have “done nothing in their lives but sell dope.” But his focus on the utility of criminal forfeitures overlooks the serious need for reform to end due-process abuse in civil forfeitures.
The AG nominee was once a prosecutor in Alabama, and that state is among the big offenders. According to a report by the Institute for Justice, between 2000 and 2013 Alabama took in more than $75 million in revenue through the equitable-sharing program. IJ ranks Alabama 31st in the nation for the amount of money it received in equitable-sharing payments from the Justice Department from 2011 to 2013. The top three, which take the least amount of money in equitable sharing, are South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming. Worst are Rhode Island, California and New York.
(snip)
The lack of procedural protection coupled with financial incentives has turned policing for profit into a slush fund for governments hungry for cash, and the payouts too often come at the expense of civil liberties. We’d like to hear what Mr. Sessions thinks of the practice today.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/jeff-sessions-and-civil-forfeiture-1482793299
= new reply since forum marked as read
the best way, really, and since I knew it was when Sessions was considered. I used both the key word -Forfeiture - and my name as the author from December 2016 to April 2017.
Going to your original question with another link. This one is in the archives.
advanced or otherwise. I have to scroll through all the posts from all the groups that I have read in a specific time frame and hope I can find it. It takes forever. I wish I were as computer literate and savvy as you are!!!! 
It has a Search button. But below it there is a link to Advanced search.
Click on it and you are faced with a window of inquiry. Now, I have only searched for OP, I don't know whether one can search for replies. In most cases, especially when I want to know if someone already posted a story, I just put a key word. Or words in quotations. And, as I say, if you know who was the OP you can really narrow the search.
And then you select the dates. Make sure not to confuse the years.
Do you have history on your computer? I use a Mac don't know how it goes with Windows. My history also has "all history" that can go month back. So then I can look at the title of posts.
Try it, you will get the hand of it. It is not google, it is DU's own and since you have a star you can use it.
Good luck
None of them get me to any sort of "search button". I tried all of them. Is it different on a touchscreen tablet...this seems to be the source of most of my problems.
I have been following your posts and would like to thank you for being very patient and hanging in there!
