This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, November 10th, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Police regularly have the law on their side when they take your stuff, even when they don't even

charge you with a crime.

In a new report from the Institute for Justice,

Policing for Profit, co-authors Lisa Nepper and Angela Erickson

break down to the extent the data exists,

where the money comes from, where it goes, and why civil forfeiture

is still a massive problem.

In the five years since the Institute for Justice produced a policing for-profit report that was the first time IJ produced that

document.

Lisa Nepper, what has changed in the world of civil asset forfeiture?

Obviously the issue has received a lot more attention in the last five years than it has in the

previous 15.

That's definitely true.

Yeah, I would say that there's been some good news and some bad news. The bad

news is that for the most part, civil forfeiture has continued unabated. We see, as we did before,

just explosive growth at the federal level, 500 million taken in 2001,

5 billion in 2014. That's a tenfold increase in just 14 years. We're seeing explosive growth

at the state level, but we're also seeing a movement toward reform and that's

one of the more positive things

that we're seeing.

...