Inquiring Minds Want to Know....re: spoils of crime

[hyphenate]

This is an odd question, but I really am interested in the answer. Perhaps it's just another factoid in a stream of useless trivia, but the answer might be of interest.

What happens to the spoils of crime when a criminal is arrested and eventually found guilty? Specifically, things like money, drugs and weapons? I'm assuming that the drugs are destroyed and perhaps the weapons are also destroyed eventually, but do they destroy the cash as well? If not, who gets it--if anyone? Does it sit around the evidence room for a hundred years or so gathering dust, or is it donated at some point to a local or national charity? Is it divided up among the officers at a precinct, used for some elaborate party, used perhaps to buy equipment for the precinct or some other such cause?

Is it absorbed into the city's budget? Or if it's a federal bust, the national budget?

I know that there are police auctions for other confiscated materials, such as cars, furniture, and other such items, but it would be difficult to auction off cash!

Anyone who has any knowledge of this subject? Would love to know.

[taterguy]

1. Depends on where you live

In NC the local school board gets the spoils of crime, via auction or other sale

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. It's called 'asset forfeiture'.

Money and property considered to be 'spoils of crime' or seized as part of an arrest (particularly arrests for drug offences) are forfeit; the money is (ostensibly) redirected into the local police budget or channeled to the local education budget; automobiles and other property are either auctioned or appropriated by the local police department (there are police and sheriff's departments with Corvette and Lexus pursuit vehicles thanks to asset forfeiture).

Asset forfeiture, in common law, has its roots in the mediaeval practice of 'deodand', in which an object held to be responsible for the death of a person was forfeit to the king, its value to be used to buy masses for the soul of the departed.

[hyphenate]

5. Thank you

It was something I was thinking about this morning. It's nice to know it goes to a worthy cause.

Some of the autos I've seen at auction, and one of the police departments in, I think Oregon, has a website of some of the auctionable items, like desks, furniture and such. I wish they had one closer to home.

[anarch]

3. Dick Cheney gets it...or at least a taste

I'm pretty sure. He is after all the head of all organized crime in the Americas.

[hyphenate]

4. Heh

I don't doubt it one bit!