This reform doesn't require a conviction for forfeiture, or even a charge. It only changes the burden of proof required for forfeiture (but still below that required in a criminal trial) and addresses the perverse financial incentive.

There are two sides to every coin.

Allowing criminals to keep the proceeds of crimes also creates horrible incentives.

No one is advocating that criminals be allowed to keep the proceeds of crimes. What they are saying is that the burden of proof should be on the government instead of the current situation where guilt is presumed.

Cops taking someones property without him being convicted of crime first seem more dangerous to me.

Indeed, many forfeiture victims never get their property back, nor are charges ever filed, without which they don't have standing to sue for return of their property.

It's the new Jim Crow.

That's not correct. If your property is seized, you can make a claim to get your property back regardless of whether or not the government ever files charges against you.

Your last line is puzzling to me. Is civil asset forfeiture a set of laws designed to systematically discriminate against a particular demographic group for the benefit of the more powerful demographic group? Jim Crow was a set of laws passed by white southerners to segregate and disenfranchise black southerners, in order to establish a privileged position for their demographic group in society. Who are the white and black southerners, respectively, in your analogy?

It's not really an analogy; The divide is still along similar racial lines. Civil asset forfeiture laws predominantly impact poor black or Hispanic people. Here's what the ACLU has to say: https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/civil-asset-forfeit...

" Asset forfeiture practices often go hand-in-hand with racial profiling and disproportionately impact low-income African-American or Hispanic people who the police decide look suspicious and for whom the arcane process of trying to get one’s property back is an expensive challenge. ACLU believes that such routine “civil asset forfeiture” puts our civil liberties and property rights under assault, and calls for reform of state and federal civil asset forfeiture laws."

>Is civil asset forfeiture a set of laws designed to systematically discriminate against a particular demographic group for the benefit of the more powerful demographic group?

Probably not designed to have that effect, but it does.

Yeah, Nixon's egalitarian crooking was often 'mistaken' for a Pinnacle-Empty Quiver, at least from a minority perspective. I guess some call it plausible deniablilty: "Corporatism done it, I ain't accountable!" For others, it might be something like Manifest Destiny, or historical inertia.

Actually, that is not true at all. When your property is seized you get a single-sided notification letter, which you must sign, that very clearly & briefly articulates the claims process.*

* at least at the city level this is true; I review all the civil forfeiture requests made by a city and every affidavit contains a copy of said notification.

We're talking about civil and administrative asset forfeiture where one need never even be charged with a crime to have their assets seized.