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Colorado General Assembly Reins in Policing for Profit

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Colorado General Assembly Reins in Policing for Profit With near-unanimous bipartisan support, the Colorado General Assembly this week passed HB26-1250, a civil forfeiture reform bill that closes a longstanding loophole in Colorado law allowing property to be forfeited without a criminal conviction. The bill also makes Colorado one of the first states in the nation to grant forfeiture defendants t...
The legislative action targets the structural premise of civil asset forfeiture, which operates on the legal fiction that property itself can be prosecuted and forfeited independently of an individual criminal conviction. By forcing courts to pause proceedings until a criminal conviction exists, the bill attempts to align the concept of property forfeiture with established criminal due process, shifting the burden of proof and systemic risk back onto the state. This move is not merely procedural...