Sessions steps up highway robbery

With a promise to use “care and professionalism”, US attorney-general Jeff Sessions has moved to expand a scandal-plagued programme of asset forfeiture that allows law-enforcement officials to seize money and goods from individuals suspected of crimes, in many cases without a criminal conviction or even a charge.

While it is nice to pledge care and professionalism, aspects of this programme have proved rife with abuse and it must be reformed.

The logical foundation of asset forfeiture is recovering the proceeds of criminal activity, such as drug deals. “No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime,” Sessions declared in a speech to the National District Attorneys Association.

Again, it is hard to argue with the principle. But in reality, as a Washington Post investigation showed in 2014, asset forfeiture has turned out to be an opportunity for police to seize cash and valuables from drivers stopped for minor infractions, and it can be extremely difficult for the innocent to recover their property. The bounty is often parcelled out to law enforcement agencies, creating a perverse profit motive.

While asset forfeiture is justified in huge drug busts, its abuse in highway arrests and in grabbing small sums from people has gone too far.

In 2015, the justice department under President Barack Obama announced curtailment of a kind of forfeiture that allowed local police to share part of their proceeds with federal authorities.

This was known as “adoptive” forfeiture, under which state and local authorities would get the seizure cases processed, or “adopted,” under more permissive federal statues, rather than stricter state laws. The 2015 order all but ended adoptive forfeiture. Now, Sessions is turning the spigot back on, as a justice department policy announcement has made clear. Miami, July 21.