>>60692193
>Americans?
Its actually a problem in ALL common law countries, its called Civil Asset Forfeiture. In theory its not a bad idea, the government can TEMPORARILY seize objects of value, and have a legal process surrounding the objects to clarify their legality. This basically gives a fair process to determine ownership of an item, gives public notice, gives people that may have been dispossessed a chance to state their case to the court.
Like for example if you help take care of a little old lady and you stole her bag of gold coins, or she has dementia and "gave" them to you. This is a way to resolve disputes so that a family member could report it, Sherriff takes the gold coins, they are basically held in escrow until a Judge can determine rightful ownership. Prevents people from having to kill each other over valuable items, and dis-incentivizes theft, improper taking, etc.
The problem is that this has become gamified, and pushed to the extreme so that it has become a revenue stream for unethical Police Departments, because they get to keep a share of any recovered unclaimed or 'ill-gotten" gains from illegal proceeds. So now a lot of departments are just seizing ANY amount of cash found even remote related to any illegal activity, or any large amounts of cash for any reason at all.
The whole purpose of the legal concept has been bastardizes, its not a bad concept. Also I am sure civil law and authoritarian countries have similar legal means to just seize your legal stuff if they want.
