Sadly, Geiger's story is not unique: not in Philadelphia, not in Pennsylvania, and not in other cities and states across the country. For decades, civil forfeiture has flipped the American principle of "innocent until proven guilty" on its head.

Until now, there have been no efforts to hear from the victims of civil forfeiture in a systematic way. But for a new report, "Frustrating, Corrupt, Unfair: Civil Forfeiture in the Words of Its Victims," my colleagues and I at the Institute for Justice (IJ) surveyed over 400 Philadelphians who lost property to the city's civil forfeiture machine from 2012 until the city modestly reformed its system in 2018 following a successful IJ class action lawsuit challenging the program. For years, the City of Brotherly Love had one of the most abusive forfeiture programs in the entire country.

We found the city's forfeiture program disproportionately targeted disadvantaged communities. Two-thirds of victims were black, 63 percent of victims earned less than $50,000 per year, and 18 percent of victims were unemployed. Over half of the city's seizures clustered in just four zip codes covering areas including Philadelphia's Kensington and Port Richmond neighborhoods, two of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. For example, the 19134 zip code, where the median income is $19,000 lower than the citywide median, accounts for only 4 percent of the city's population but a staggering 31.2 percent of cash forfeitures.

Our report also found that 58 percent of forfeiture victims were never given a receipt for their cash or other property when it was seized, and some victims who did receive a receipt--including Geiger--told us it didn't match what was taken. After spending a night in jail, Geiger was handed a receipt for $465, not the full $580 taken from him. Without a receipt, it is virtually impossible to prove ownership of seized cash. Unsurprisingly, victims were eight times more likely to get their property back if they were given documentation at the time of the seizure.

The report highlights how the forfeiture process made it next to impossible for victims to recoup seized property. In the cases we studied, victims often had to attend multiple court sessions, where prosecutors--not judges--ran the show and defense lawyers were rarely present. Victims who missed a single court date were highly unlikely to ever see their property again. And attending these hearings was particularly difficult for the working poor who could not afford to take time off work to go to court. People earning less than $50,000 a year were 69 percent less likely to even try to get their property back, and employed people were 53 percent less likely to try.