For this very reason, the judiciary, both state and federal, should be alert to detect constitutionally proscribed injustices imposed on individual wrongdoers. In sum, the concensus seems to be that a proportionality approach is appropriate to determine whether an in rem forfeiture, proper under an instrumentality test, violates the Excessive Fines Clause. The owner's culpability is also relevant because it is the owner who is punished by the forfeiture. The 'war on drugs' has resulted in an enormous increase in federal asset forfeitures in the last decade. State and local governments also benefit from federal forfeitures.
Civil forfeitures are thus a substantial source of revenue for both federal and local governments.
Forfeiture is a punishment annexed by law to some illegal act or negligence, in the owner of lands, tenements or hereditaments, whereby he loses all his interest therein and they become vested in the party injured, as a recompense for the wrong which he alone or the Public together with himself, hath sustained. By the commission of crimes and misdemeanors. By alienation contrary to law. By the non-performance of conditions. Forfeiture For Crimes.