Forfeiture refers broadly to the practice of transferring assets from individuals to the government. Law enforcement agencies typically sell these assets and keep the proceeds. This occurs most commonly when police seize cash, vehicles, homes, firearms, computers or other items in the process of investigating a potential crime.
If the owner of the property is later convicted beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal court, the assets seized by the police can be permanently forfeited to the government. This is known as criminal forfeiture.
Civil forfeiture is different, however. It operates outside the criminal court system, either in civil or administrative courts. People do not have to be convicted of a crime for their property to be forfeited to the government under civil forfeiture.
The way this works is that law enforcement agencies allege that a person’s assets were involved in criminal activity — that is, they either were used in an illegal act or resulted from one. Police may seize property based on the standard of probable cause, meaning that their suspicion of criminality must be reasonably believable.
In civil court, prosecutors have a lower standard of evidence to meet compared to criminal court. This produces odd results. Some people are cleared of wrongdoing in criminal court, but their property is found “guilty” in civil court and taken from them.
In Michigan, there are five forfeiture statutes, though most forfeitures are connected to drugs or prostitution. The statutes are: