FEW opportunities exist for interested buyers to lay their hands in a single evening on a string of racehorses, a pair of slightly worn Louis Vuitton trainers, four gold Krugerrand, a Rolex or five, a Mercedes and a couple of yachts, at knock-down prices. But all are up for grabs later this month at an auction house in Belfast. They are lots in a sale of assets seized, for the most part, from criminals.

Sports memorabilia seems to be a favourite investment for crooks. Recent items sold include boxers’ belts, going for up to £650 ($800), and footballers’ framed boots; patriots will be disappointed to see that at £550, Cristiano Ronaldo’s footwear outperformed that of David Beckham (£300). Jewellery and fast cars are predictably popular. Wilsons, an auctioneer that regularly disposes of criminals’ assets, recently sold a Rolex watch for £13,000 and a BMW for £20,500. Boats—both pleasure cruisers and those used for more businesslike purposes—bob up regularly. In August the Golem, a 57-foot yacht used to smuggle cocaine, went for £95,000.

More mundane products, including lost-and-found items, are sold by the police, often through websites such as eBay. Cheshire police’s offerings include a box of 25 suspension files (starting price £0.99, no bids) and a printer cartridge (highest bid currently £2.40).

Increasingly such sales are a means of disposing of pricey assets bought legally by crooks using ill-gotten gains and seized by the authorities under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA). Such assets may go for less than their market price (the Golem had sold for three times as much previously). But they provide police forces with useful extra income, especially in these straitened times. Money recovered from criminals’ assets is divided between the Home Office (which gets half) and the relevant investigation agencies, the prosecution service and the courts under what is known as the “Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme”.

Such incentives can prove useful. Without them, efforts to recover criminal assets might fall by the wayside, since the work is difficult and complicated, suggests Kennedy Talbot, a barrister and member of the Proceeds of Crime Lawyers’ Association. Forces are already struggling to retain financial investigators, who are lured away by juicier jobs in the private sector.

Now, with budgets being slashed, Mark Burns-Williamson, the police and crime commissioner (PCC) for West Yorkshire, is campaigning for all money raised by seizing assets to go directly to the police. It is not clear how the half that goes to the Home Office is spent, he says. It should go back to the police to be invested in the local force, and in the PCC’s Safer Communities Fund for local worthy groups.

But allowing the police to keep everything they seized would raise concerns, says Colin King, head of the Crime Research Group at the University of Sussex. It could encourage police to go after criminals whose assets are easiest to capture, rather than those who do most harm. In some areas police are already more likely to raid brothels run by sex workers than those run by organised criminals, because the former seem easier targets, says Alex Feis-Bryce of Ugly Mugs, which encourages prostitutes to report violence. Some might prefer the approach of Matthew Ellis, Staffordshire’s PCC, who gives all recovered money to groups that offset the impact of crime, and allocates £250,000 to the force in lieu of their income from POCA.

Forces in America have long been criticised for “policing for profit” by overenthusiastically seizing assets alleged to be connected to crimes under civil-forfeiture rules. Better that all the money goes back to the Home Office or some central fund, reckons Mr King. (In Ireland, it all goes to the finance ministry.) Crime pays, but who should benefit remains unclear.