The vast majority of people who have had cash seized by the Drug Enforcement Agency weren't convicted of doing anything wrong. 
 
 In a report released on March 29, the Department of Justice's Inspector General found that, since 2007, the DEA seized $3.2 billion in cash from people who weren't charged with any crime. With the total cash seized in that time totaling just over $4 billion, that means 81% of the money seized came from people with no charge at all. 
 
 Civil asset forfeiture allows the DEA to seize cash, real estate, cars or even personal items from people suspected of dealing drugs or engaging in organized crime. 
 
 But the DOJ report found that out of the 100 cases it looked at randomly, 56% of the time "there was no discernible connection between the seizure and the advancement of law enforcement efforts." 
 
 Such a report "raises serious concerns that maybe [the] real purpose here is not to fight crime, but to seize and forfeit property," Darpana Sheth, a senior attorney for the Institute of Justice, told the Washington Post. 
 
 The report highlights a case in which a task force from Florida's Bal Harbour Police Department arrested 84 individuals and seized more than $49 million without filing a single criminal indictment. 
 
 "Such outcomes can raise questions about whether seizures are intended to serve legitimate law enforcement interests or to bolster law enforcement budgets," the report concludes. 
 
 In the past, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and even late show host John Oliver have spoken out against the problem of seizing money and property from people who may not have committed any crime. 
 
 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. ||||| A selective collection of websites archived by the National Library of Medicine on the current opioid epidemic in the United States, declared a public health emergency in October 2017. Archived content includes websites and social media documenting a wide range of responses to and perspectives on the epidemic, including voices from of the medical and public health communities, the addiction research, policymakers and policy reformers, law enforcement, and the addicted and their families and communities. Archived websites are primarily in English. NLM will continue to develop, review, describe, and add content to the collection. ||||| 
 
 The entrance to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Museum in Arlington, Va. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) 
 
 The Drug Enforcement Administration takes billions of dollars in cash from people who are never charged with criminal activity, according to a report issued today by the Justice Department's Inspector General. 
 
 Since 2007, the report found, the DEA has seized more than $4 billion in cash from people suspected of involvement with the drug trade. But 81 percent of those seizures, totaling $3.2 billion, were conducted administratively, meaning no civil or criminal charges were brought against the owners of the cash and no judicial review of the seizures ever occurred. 
 
 That total does not include the dollar value of other seized assets, like cars, homes, electronics and clothing. 
 
 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 practice does not require authorities to obtain a criminal conviction, and it allows departments to keep seized cash and property for themselves unless individuals successfully challenge the forfeiture in court. Critics across the political spectrum say this creates a perverse profit motive, incentivizing police to seize goods not for the purpose of fighting crime, but for padding department budgets. 
 
 Law enforcement groups say the practice is a valuable tool for fighting criminal organizations, allowing them to seize drug profits and other ill-gotten goods. 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. 
 
 The Inspector General found that the Department of Justice "does not collect or evaluate the data necessary to know whether its seizures and forfeitures are effective, or the extent to which seizures present potential risks to civil liberties." 
 
 In the absence of this information, the report examined 100 DEA cash seizures that occurred "without a court-issued warrant and without the presence of narcotics, the latter of which would provide strong evidence of related criminal behavior." 
 
 Fewer than half of those seizures were related to a new or ongoing criminal investigation, or led to an arrest or prosecution, the Inspector General found. 
 
 "When seizure and administrative forfeitures do not ultimately advance an investigation or prosecution," the report concludes, "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 scope of asset forfeiture is staggering. Since 2007 the Department of Justice's Asset Forfeiture Fund, which collects proceeds from seized cash and other property, has ballooned to $28 billion. In 2014 alone authorities seized $5 billion in cash and property from people -- greater than the value of all documented losses to burglary that year. 
 
 In most of the seizures examined by the Inspector General, DEA officers initiated encounters with people based on whether they met certain criteria, like "traveling to or from a known source city for drug trafficking, purchasing a ticket within 24 hours of travel, purchasing a ticket for a long flight with an immediate return, purchasing a one-way ticket, and traveling without checked luggage." 
 
 Some of the encounters were based on tips from confidential sources working in the travel industry, a number of whom have received large sums of money in exchange for their cooperation. In one case, officers targeted an individual for questioning on a tip from a travel industry informant that the individual had paid for a plane ticket with a pre-paid debit card and cash. 
 
 Most individuals who have cash or property seized by law enforcement do not dispute the seizure. There's no right to an attorney in forfeiture proceedings, meaning defendants must foot the bill for a lawyer themselves. In many cases, forfeiture amounts are so small that they're not worth fighting in court. 
 
 Forfeiture cases are also legally complex and difficult for individuals to win. Forfeiture cases are brought against the property, rather than the individual, leading to Kafkaesque case titles like United States v. $8,850 in U.S. Currency and United States of America v. One Men's Rolex Pearl Master Watch. 
 
 While criminal proceedings assume the defendant's innocence, forfeiture proceedings start from the presumption of guilt. That means that individuals who fight forfeiture must prove their innocence in court. 
 
 For these reasons, many defendants don't bother disputing forfeitures. The Inspector General's report, however, finds that those who do often get at least a portion of their cash returned. Only one-fifth of people who had their cash seized by the DEA disputed the seizures in court. But among those who contested the seizure, nearly 40 percent ended up getting all or some of their cash returned, suggesting that the DEA's forfeiture net ensnares many individuals not involved in wrongdoing. 
 
 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." 
 
 It also took issue with the Inspector General's analysis of the 100 DEA cash seizures it examined, saying more of them were connected with criminal activity than the report suggested. 
 
 The Inspector General stood by the report and dismissed the Department's concerns as "assumptions and speculation." The Drug Enforcement Administration did not respond to a request for comment. 
 
 "Nobody in America should lose their property without being convicted of a crime," said the Institute for Justice's Sheth. "If our goal is to curb crime, we should simply abolish civil forfeiture" and only forfeit property after a criminal conviction is obtained, she added. ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — A government watchdog on Wednesday identified what it called weaknesses in the Justice Department's asset forfeiture program, including poor data collection and analysis, and inadequate training of local and state officers. 
 
 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. 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. 
 
 The report said the department does not collect adequate data to determine whether law enforcement seizures of funds truly benefit criminal investigations or the extent to which they infringe on civil liberties. 
 
 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 report also said the department does not require its local task force officers to be trained on asset forfeiture laws before participating in federal forfeiture, leading to the perception of inconsistent and arbitrary operations. 
 
 In a written response to the report, the Justice Department's criminal division said the inspector general had relied on incomplete or flawed data during its investigation and had presented misleading conclusions. It said the 100 DEA investigations discussed in the report represent a "very limited aspect" of the department's overall asset forfeiture operations. 
 
 It also said the report had overlooked the "robust training" the department already provides on asset forfeiture law, practices and policy, and that the inspector general had underreported the return of seized funds to their owners. 
 
 The report is the latest instance of scrutiny of the government's criminal and civil asset forfeiture efforts. The Justice Department sees the program, in which law enforcement can assume title to property seized during investigations, as a way to strip suspects of the proceeds of their activities, to deter crime and to compensate crime victims. 
 
 Former Attorney General Eric Holder in 2015 tightened control on the department's asset forfeiture operations amid concerns that property could be seized without judicial oversight and without the owner ever being charged with a crime. That policy restricted the ability of the federal government to take possession of, or adopt, assets seized by local authorities. 
 
 Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, who is the House Judiciary Committee chairman and has been critical of asset forfeiture operations, called on the Justice Department to implement the inspector general's recommendations. 
 
 "Today's report by the Inspector General makes it clear that asset forfeiture is in desperate need of reform," Goodlatte said in a statement. "While asset forfeiture is a useful law enforcement tool to fight crime, the current lack of oversight and training poses dangers to Americans' civil liberties." 
 
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 Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP
– 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.