Growth in Asset Seizures

"CAFRA [Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act] has not reduced the amount of annual forfeitures. In fact, the value of assets seized annually by the federal government has risen substantially since CAFRA was passed: in 1985, $27 million was deposited into the Department of Justice’s Asset Forfeiture Fund.⁶⁷ A decade later in 1996, four years before CAFRA and during the period that motivated Rep. Hyde to press for changes, $338 million was deposited into the fund.⁶⁸ And in 2008, the fund reported receipts of approximately $1.3 billion,⁶⁹ a figure that does not include hundreds of millions of dollars more that federal agencies collected as their share from seizures by state agencies.⁷⁰"