Found this interesting article in the Economist about forfeiture laws which create incentives for the police that lead, according to some, to widescale abuse: A bit like Naija police but with more subtlety.

In most states the police can seize property they suspect has been used to commit a crime. Under “civil asset forfeiture” laws, they typically do not have to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that a crime was committed, or even charge anyone with an offence. What is more, the money raised by auctioning seized houses, boats and cars is often used to boost the budgets of the police department that did the seizing. That can mean fancier patrol cars, badass hardware or simply keeping the budget plump in lean times. In one survey 40% of police executives agreed that funds from civil-asset forfeiture were “necessary as a budget supplement”. This conflict of interest has predictable consequences. It spurs the police to pay more attention to cases that are likely to involve seizable assets (such as drug busts) and less attention to other ones. A report from the Institute for Justice, a pressure group, calls it “Policing for Profit”.

An owner can usually challenge a seizure by arguing that he did not know his property was being used for criminal purposes. But in 38 out of 50 states, the burden of proof is on him to prove his innocence.

Police and prosecutors deny that the system is widely abused. Scott Burns of the National District Attorneys Association says that elected sheriffs would be punished at the polls if they went around seizing property without good cause. But the safeguards are slender. For instance, police can find a wad of cash in a car, claim that the owner was planning to buy drugs with it, and then seize it. The evidence may be simply that a dog smelled drugs; yet one test found that a third of banknotes have traces of cocaine on them. The poor are disproportionately at risk, since people without credit cards are more likely to carry cash. And since the sum seized is often less than the legal costs of trying to get it back, many people never try.

By and large, the police do a dangerous job honourably. But they are human, so giving them a financial incentive to seize people’s property is dotty. Why should the money not be put in the general pot of public funds? And seizing a citizen’s assets without proving him guilty of anything is nakedly unjust.

http://www.economist.com/world/united-states/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16219747