<P> Civil forfeiture in the United States, also called civil asset forfeiture or civil judicial forfeiture or occasionally civil seizure, is a legal process in which law enforcement officers take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing . While civil procedure, as opposed to criminal procedure, generally involves a dispute between two private citizens, civil forfeiture involves a dispute between law enforcement and property such as a pile of cash or a house or a boat, such that the thing is suspected of being involved in a crime . To get back the seized property, owners must prove it was not involved in criminal activity . Sometimes it can mean a threat to seize property as well as the act of seizure itself . In 2015, Eric Holder ended "adoptive forfeiture" which occurred "when a state or local law enforcement agency seizes property pursuant to state law and requests that a federal agency take the seized asset and forfeit it under federal law" due to abuse . Although states proceeded to curtail the powers of police to seize assets, actions by the Justice Department in July 2017 have sought to reinstate police seizure powers to raise funding for federal agencies and local law enforcement . </P> <P> Proponents see civil forfeiture as a powerful tool to thwart criminal organizations involved in the illegal drug trade, with $12 billion annual profits, since it allows authorities to seize cash and other assets, from narcotics trafficking . They also argue that it is an efficient method since it allows law enforcement agencies to use these seized proceeds to further battle illegal activity, that is, directly converting value obtained from illegal items for law enforcement purposes by harming criminals economically while helping law enforcement financially . Critics argue that innocent owners can become entangled in the process to the extent that their right to property is violated, with few legal protections and due process rules to protect them in situations where they are presumed guilty instead of being presumed innocent . Further, critics argue that the incentives lead to corruption and law enforcement misbehavior . There is consensus that abuses have happened but disagreement about their extent as well as whether the overall benefits to society are worth the cost of the instances of abuse . </P> <P> The idea of going at people through their property has a long history . The theories are quite old . The prevalence of the practice is comparatively recent . </P> <P> Civil forfeiture has a history dating back several hundred years with roots in British maritime law to the British Navigation Acts around the middle 1600s . These laws required ships importing or exporting goods from British ports to fly the British flag; ships which failed to do this could be seized regardless of whether the ship's owner was guilty of doing any wrongdoing . It was easier to seize a vessel than try to apprehend an owner on the other side of the ocean, as explained by Supreme Court justice Joseph Story: </P>

Why do local governments resort to civil forfeiture