Both of you are saying the same thing. The difference is criminal vs civil forfeiture. Criminal already works as an escrow system (sort of, the feds might not have been able to find what they want to seize before the conviction). Civil doesn't in that it doesn't require a conviction.
Civil has its own benefits though.. That famous "Civil asset forfeitures overshadow the value of all thefts" infographic from a few years back was only the case because the Feds took all of Bernie Madoff's funds via civil asset forfeiture and then gave those billions of dollars back to his victims. Had they waited for the criminal cases to play out, it would've been years before they saw their money.
> Had they waited for the criminal cases to play out, it would've been years before they saw their money.
They could have sued directly in civil court without waiting for the criminal cases to play out. If the Feds have enough evidence to justify foregoing, you know, actual trials and immediately redistribute the assets to the victims then any court cases should be trivial formalities and quickly resolved. On the other hand, if it actually does take years to determine guilt then maybe the Feds shouldn't be so quick to apply the sentence before the trial.
There is a significant distinction between the government declaring that money (/other goods) is another party's property and returning possession to the rightful owner (ie equity), and the government declaring that something was earned through an illegal activity and thereby transferring it to themselves (ie taking).
Sure, but both are under the flag of Civil Asset Forfeiture. We should definitely make it so corrupt departments aren't funding themselves with spurious CAF, but it's useful to acknowledge that many use cases of CAF make complete sense and provide a public good.
Giving the government a way to cheat will definitely create some good results. But that doesn't mean having the way to cheat is a good thing.
I noted a clear distinction for the case you listed. A traditional joint civil suit against Madoff would have done the exact same thing with a similar amount of process. It's true that access to our legal system is way too expensive in general, but creating a backdoor for the government and hoping they will use it to help private citizens is not the way to fix that.
