MARGARET DAVIS, a 77-year old woman in Philadelphia, left her door unlocked so that her neighbours could pop in from time to time to check up on her. One day, some drug-dealers fleeing from the police ran through her house and apparently dropped some of their stash as they were fleeing. The police found these drugs, and figured that this was a good enough reason to file a motion to seize Ms Davis's home. It took her two years and the help of some charitable lawyers to beat them off.

Chris Hunt was driving through Georgia one day to visit his mother. Some police officers stopped him. They thought they could smell marijuana, so they searched his car. They found $6,581 in cash. They confiscated it. Mr Hunt insists that the money was the weekend's profits from his car-detailing shop. He was never charged with a crime, but the cops kept the cash. When Mr Hunt sued, he only got half of it back.

These stories are from a new report on asset-forfeiture laws by the Institute for Justice. Under state and federal laws, the police have wide latitude to seize property if they suspect it is connected with a crime. The owner need not necessarily be charged with a crime to lose his property.

Such seizures are difficult to challenge:

[F]ew property owners, especially low-income individuals, can meet the burdens of civil forfeiture proceedings, [so they] often do not challenge seizures of their property. This is especially true when government seizes property the value of which would be greatly exceeded by the time, attorney fees and other expenses necessary to fight the forfeiture. As a result, many property owners do not and cannot challenge forfeitures, and the government obtains the property by default.

Seized assets can be used to beef up police budgets, so the police have a glaring conflict of interest when deciding whether or not to grab your stuff:

Incredibly, given the ability of law enforcement through civil forfeiture to raise off-budget funds, often without limitation, many states do not even require law enforcement agencies to report how much money has been raised and on what items the money has been spent.

Radley Balko calls it a "licence to steal".