Because "civil" means "having to do with people and government office as opposed to the military or religion" /s

Next time on the program: why "assault" in "battery and assault" doesn't actually mean the same as "assault" in colloquial speech.

Because the action is against the property being seized, not the owner of said property[0]. Property cannot commit a crime, and therefore cannot be the defendant in a criminal proceeding, but at the federal level and in almost every state, there are civil statutes permitting these cases to be litigated by the government in rem.[1]

0 - note that if this happens to your property, it sure will feel like it is happening to you. Lawyers will be happy to lawsplain their BS theory[2] to you for a nominal hourly fee. This will not make you feel any better for having been robbed at gunpoint.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_rem_jurisdiction

2 - Spoiler alert: the theory is exactly as stupid as it sounds.

Interestingly enough, property used to be able to commit a crime (back when slavery was a thing) but it still could not be sued or be the plaintiff in a lawsuit.

Yes, I believe the government used the "heads I win, tails you lose" theory of jurisprudence in those cases.

Indirectly, because the idea behind it is old and pertains to very peculiar circumstances.

Imagine that it's 1804, and a ship shows up in port carrying contraband. The sailors on the ship didn't know about it, they just make sure the boat doesn't sink. The owners are nowhere to be found, they live in London or Paris or Antwerp or something, and you'll never be able to arrest them for it (this is the pre-extradition world).

What do you do with the contraband? You need a formal law to deal with seizing it. And this serves as the framework for our modern civil forfeiture laws. A case would be entered into the dockets something like "State of New York vs. 152 Gallons of Whisky" or whatever. The whisky itself committed no crime, there can't be a criminal case.

Even then, maybe it's actually the crew that took a couple of additional crates of whiskey/cigarettes as a side-gig (pretty normal even today) and not on the owners' orders, good luck trying to prove it or anything at all, really.