Collaborative Confiscation

Asset forfeiture is the seizure of property that is believed to be connected to criminal activity, typically the sale of illicit drugs. Despite the dismantling of the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, the legalization of marijuana, and legislative reform the value of assets seized in California has not decreased. To understand why, we digitize government reports and hand collect the membership of task forces in order to link each seizure to individual teams of state, local and federal agencies. We document that between 2002 and 2009, law enforcement agencies seized $3.17 billion. While federal agencies unilaterally seized 58% in terms of revenue, local agencies initiated 60.9% of seizures without federal involvement. Collaborative seizures involving multiple agencies are larger: the median federal-local collaborative seizure is almost three times the median federal unilateral seizure. Among seizures with local involvement, 75% of revenue came from collaborative seizures. We map the network of collaborations, and show that it features a core-periphery structure with 99.97% of potential revenue accruing to agencies in the core. We design and plan to estimate a network formation model where agencies choose who to collaborate with and how much effort to contribute. We plan to use the model to understand how different reforms impact both total asset forfeiture and the amount of law enforcement collaboration.