Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Justice Department plans to issue a new directive aimed at ramping up seizure of property, "especially ill-gotten gains from drug dealers." (Reuters)The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that it will be restarting a federal asset forfeiture program that had been shut down by the previous administration. But the adoptive forfeiture program came under particularly intense criticism because it allowed state and local police to sidestep state-level forfeiture reforms using a sleight of paperwork. Since the 2015 policy change, many more states have implemented forfeiture reforms making it harder to seize cash and property. That means that more law enforcement agencies now have the incentive to sidestep those reforms via the reinstated adoptive forfeiture process.

Source: Washington Post July 19, 2017 16:55 UTC