![handle is hein.journals/pgsty19 and id is 1 raw text is: Policing & Society 1] Routledge
Vol. 19, No. 1, March 2009, 1-19 Taylor&FrancsGroup
Race, politics, and drug law enforcement: an analysis of civil asset
forfeiture patterns across US counties
Ronald Helmsa* and S.E. Costanzab
aWestern Washington University, Department of Sociology, Bellingham, WA, USA; bCentral
Connecticut State University, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, New Britain,
CT USA
(Received February 2007; final version received October 2007)
The research on civil asset forfeiture has been largely anecdotal and has taken a
politicised approach. Most accounts use specific cases to support their claims that
widespread use of forfeiture is generated by dubious or 'hidden' law enforcement
motives. Yet there are plausible theoretical reasons to believe that structural
contexts condition the choice of mechanisms favoured by the law enforcement
agencies. This research emphasises structural explanations for variation in the
ratio of asset forfeiture dollars to drug arrests. Regression estimates show that
agency complexity, black population size, economic inequality due to the presence
of high income earners and local Republican Party political support in past
elections are strong predictors of variation in this ratio indicator. This study
highlights the selective use of asset forfeiture and arrest. The evidence presented
here supports wider claims that the application of alternative mechanisms of local
law enforcement do not operate in a social, economic and political isolation but
rather their selective use is shaped by patterns of local inequality.
Keywords: drugs; police agency decision making; police administration;
prosecutorial decision making; inequality; politics; social structure
Introduction
Civil asset forfeiture is a widely accepted but selectively employed tool used by the
local law enforcement agencies in the war on drugs. Its availability for use highlights
a recurrent political problem facing local law enforcement agencies; that is, the
problem of ensuring that legitimate imperatives govern encounters with citizens.
While all criminal justice decision making is potentially critical to the overall quality
of justice in America, the most widely recognised discretionary decision, and perhaps
the least controllable, is the decision by individual police officers of whether or not to
make an arrest. Local prosecutors must then proceed with formal charging decisions
or potentially drop the case. But criminal prosecution is not the only available legal
option for law enforcement agencies since civil remedies also are potentially available.
One limitation in previous criminal justice literature is that it has often fixated on
this key decision-making point as a binary scenario, without considering other
options available to law enforcement and prosecutors. The war on drugs context
makes this particularly problematic since alternative prosecutorial tools including
*Corresponding author. Email: Ronald.Helms@wwu.edu
ISSN 1043-9463 print/ISSN 1477-2728 online
© 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/10439460802457578
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