Weston Publishing: Study shows that drug asset forfeiture laws are not corrupting the police

MIAMI, Feb. 9, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A recent national survey found that 38% of American adults believe that drug asset forfeiture laws are motivating the police to make legally questionable drug arrests in order to seize people's cash and property. Professors Stewart J. D'Alessio, Lisa Stolzenberg and Jamie L. Flexon of Florida International University evaluated the empirical validity of this belief in their study entitled "Are Drug Asset Forfeiture Laws Corrupting the Police?"

D'Alessio and his colleagues speculated that if drug asset forfeiture laws are compelling the police to make legally suspect drug arrests in order to confiscate people's property, then the likelihood of conviction for a felony drug offense should be substantially lower in counties where the police derive a greater amount of income from drug asset forfeiture seizures. This supposition is rooted in the logic that the lure of money entices the police to make drug arrests fraught with legal and evidentiary problems, which in turn decreases the likelihood of conviction controlling for other factors predictive of criminal justice processing outcome.

In their multilevel analysis of over 30 large urban U.S. counties, D'Alessio and his colleagues found that felony drug defendants did not have a lower probability of being convicted in counties where the police generated a greater amount of income from drug asset forfeiture seizures.

Their findings also revealed that the likelihood of conviction for a felony drug offense was not substantially different for black and white defendants in counties where the police generated more income from seizing people's property. In fact, there was no evidence of racial disparity in the likelihood of drug conviction generally because black and white felony drug defendants had approximately the same odds of being convicted across all the counties.

Professor D'Alessio said that, "This latter finding is interesting because it suggests that the police are not performing their drug enforcement duties in a racially biased manner. Otherwise black drug defendants would be less likely to be convicted than similarly situated white drug defendants."

Citation – Stewart J. D'Alessio, Lisa Stolzenberg, and Jamie L. Flexon (2015) Are Drug Asset Forfeiture Laws Corrupting the Police? Weston Publishing, LLC.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271519828_Are_Drug_Asset_Forfeiture_Laws_Corrupting_the_Police

About the Authors – Stewart J. D'Alessio, Lisa Stolzenberg, and Jamie L. Flexon are professors in the School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University.

SOURCE Weston Publishing, LLC