One reason not to institute the same penalty for the police is that taxpayers end up paying.

You might say, good, that means voters will try to ensure future police don't do this shit. Which is a nice theory, but probably doesn't work out in practice.

In practice, you have small towns that can be bankrupted by a good-size suit, which is probably not a good outcome. You also have large cities that have room to minimax what they can get away with, and now all you've done is possibly deterred really egregious cases.

It gets substantially more complicated with the intersection of feds and state agencies, where (depending on the state) police are good at gaming where the money goes depending on how and what is charged by whom. (There are complicated revenue sharing arrangements between, for instance, the DEA and local cops for forfeitures.

If your hypothetical bank robber needs to be deprived of the money (and I don't think I agree, but that's a different discussion), the proper way to align incentives is to ensure the police do not see any of the money. Period. Give it back to the bank, put it in the state general fund, give it to a random orphan, burn it, whatever[1]. But as long as the police can by shiny toys with it (conference attendance, margarita machines and outright theft have all happened), they have an incentive to push it as hard as they can.

[1] Giving the funds to the state still has incentive problems, but they are muted. I don't know that there's any empirical evidence if it is sufficiently muted to align police behavior with what most non-cops consider reasonable.

> In practice, you have small towns that can be bankrupted by a good-size suit, which is probably not a good outcome.

It's an excellent outcome. Particularly in small towns, the police strongly reflect the attitude of the people.

I went to high school in a southern town U.S. town that then had a population of about 2000. I can assure you that police behavior there strongly reflected the attitudes of a couple wealthy families in the town, not the ~1900 other folks.

Maybe treble damages would help, but with many areas of the legal system it seems to me that what's needed most is a much more efficient first pass by a neutral party (court) to determine reasonable presumptions that can be challenged by slower and more deliberate passes. In other words, why are the police and DA making this determination? Why can't we have neutral party making the determination as to what happens to seized property?

I think a better approach would be to turn the money to the state's general fund. That way you avoid the problems with cops loading up with overtime and buying fancy cars.

The problem with the direct seizures going to the cops is that the local government underfunds the overtime budget -- that affects the policeman's pocket and is a powerful motivator.

What about sending it to the Fed to be recycled or distributed however newly printed money is distributed?

I think that to avoid bad incentives, No part of government should receive any benefit from the seizure?

Maybe the additional value that must be paid should increase with the time that it is held?

To pay for the opportunity cost of the person not having access to the money for the period of time.

Also, forbidding the police from keeping the items.