Importantly, it also set up significant financial incentives tied to asset forfeiture by allowing for the retention of forfeited property and by creating an arrangement whereby state and local agencies can share seizures with federal agencies.
In their report, they show that in the time between September 11, 2001, and their study in 2014, there had been 61,998 completely warrantless cash seizures made on highways and shared with federal agencies through the Equitable Sharing Program, constituting $2.5 billion in takings.
The local and state governments that oversee these agencies can and often do offset the police department's budget in some proportion to the amount of revenue which that department generates by using civil asset forfeiture.
The earlier mentioned Equitable Sharing Program exists for state and local agencies to share their seizures with federal agencies, but each state also has their own avenues and accompanying rules for handling seizures.
Agencies are not required to share with both their state and the federal government at the same time.
Interestingly, the Bureau's study found that state and local governments would offset their police's budget by nearly the full amount of their forfeiture revenue if those police used the Equitable Sharing Program and offset the same budget by a smaller amount if those same forfeitures were shared with the state instead. The reason for this disparity is not obvious from the empirical data collected and analyzed in the study, but some reasonable conjectures can be made.
State governments do not directly receive any of the proceeds from seizures shared through the Equitable Sharing Program, but they can profit from seizures shared with them instead. It could simply be that those state governments want a cut of the cash.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/no-honor-among-government-thieves-evil-asset-forfeiture
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