Payton Alexander, Opinion contributor

In most of the United States, police can seize your property without charging or convicting you of a crime.

It’s called civil asset forfeiture. If it doesn’t sound fair to you, you’re not alone.

But thanks to a bipartisan coalition of grassroots volunteers across the country, lawmakers in at least 15 states are weighing legislation to do away with the practice.

Under civil asset forfeiture, police can and have seized cash, cars and even houses from people who ultimately are found innocent — and pocketed the proceeds. Many police departments depend on such seizures to bolster their budgets, and have fought tooth and nail to defend the practice despite the public outcry. Yet the tide is beginning to turn. In a sea change of public opinion that would have seemed impossible even a decade ago, people of all political stripes are beginning to recognize that there are some serious concerns with this practice — and lawmakers are taking note.

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In Iowa, which just passed legislation to reform civil asset forfeiture, lawmakers targeted the burden of proof as a central problem with the practice. To seize property, it used to be that police in the Hawkeye State needed only to prove that it was connected to a crime by a preponderance of the evidence — a legal term meaning stronger evidence in favor than not. The preponderance of the evidence standard is typically used in civil cases, and it's a weaker test than the “clear and convincing” or “beyond a reasonable doubt” standards needed for convictions in criminal trials.

Now, the standard of proof has been raised to “clear and convincing,” and prosecutors must obtain a criminal conviction to seize property worth less than $5,000. While this is a start, the bill takes only baby steps toward addressing what Lee McGrath, counsel for the Institute for Justice (IJ), has called the “perverse financial incentives that warp law enforcement priorities to pursue cash instead of criminals.” Still, any progress is welcome.

Challenging the status quo

Other states are taking different approaches. In Tennessee, lawmakers are voting on requirements that the proceeds of forfeitures be deposited in the state’s general fund, hoping to remove the incentive for police to unjustly seize property. This approach seems to have merit. According to IJ’s Dick Carpenter, research shows that “the financial incentives baked into civil forfeiture laws influence law enforcement behavior” because they often keep 100% of funds raised through forfeiture. From 2009 to 2014, Tennessee law enforcement collected nearly $86 million in forfeiture, not including the value of all the cars and electronics they seized.

Yet even where states enact restrictions, local departments find a way to get around the rules. By exploiting a process called “equitable sharing,” law enforcement decision-makers can circumvent restrictions by cooperating with federal agencies, which then share up to 80% of the proceeds with them. In New Hampshire, police departments garnered an average of more than $1 million a year from 2000 to 2013 through this tactic. In response, the state legislature is working on a bill to close that loophole.

Raising standards of proof, eliminating perverse incentives, and preventing agencies from skirting local rules by cooperating with the federal government are the key planks of a reform platform that is gaining traction in state legislatures.

Voters across the nation should applaud legislators and governors for taking important steps forward and demand that their own representatives support continued reforms changes. Enacting these reforms to fix this problematic incentive system gets us closer to restoring the promise of the Bill of Rights: that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

Payton Alexander is a policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity.You can follow him on Twitter @AlexanderPayton.