This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, June 7th, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Civil forfeiture is legal in almost every state, but not in New Mexico.

Police and other defenders of forfeiture say

that eliminating this particular form of legalized theft would make it harder to do their

jobs. Jennifer McDonald is a researcher at the Institute for Justice.

She's followed the New Mexico experience

since they eliminated civil forfeiture.

We discussed what she's found.

So I hear police in

fact, if you explain it to the police will defend civil forfeiture these days.

In fact, if you explain it to the average person,

they first do not believe the truth of what you are telling them, and then once they do a little

digging they find out, this is terrible, how do we stop it? That's basically the path to realization to enlightenment on this particular issue.

So New Mexico kind of felt like it was out of nowhere, got rid of civil forfeiture in 2015.

You've done some research on what their experience has been since then.

What did you find?

I found that compared to neighboring Colorado in Texas,

there's been absolutely no change in crime rates

or arrest rates in New Mexico

as a result of their eliminating civil forfeiture and directing all forfeiture proceeds to the state general fund.

All right, so why Colorado and Texas?

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