In Who Are the Criminals?, John Hagan argues that legislators use “crisis framing” to influence how the general public thinks about crime. President Ronald Reagan used reports of a drug use epidemic fueled by organized crime as part of his crisis framing. In 1984, he signed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act (CCCA) as part of his “war on drugs.” The CCCA allowed law enforcement to use civil asset forfeiture (CAF) to keep or sell property that it suspected was connected to illegal activity. State legislators followed suit and passed their own CAF laws. Some critics argue that law enforcements’ use of CAF has disproportionately targeted minority populations. We draw on racial threat theory to examine connections between the size of minority populations and the use of CAF in California. Our analysis uses nineteen years of CAF cases filed with the California Attorney General’s Office. Consistent with racial threat theory, we find a positive association between the number of forfeitures in a jurisdiction and a logged measure of the percentage of Black residents, net of crime, and other jurisdiction attributes. Our results support concerns that law enforcement has incorporated CAF as a technique used disproportionately against some minority communities.

中文翻译：

---

加州民事资产没收和少数族裔居民的治安

在谁是罪犯？约翰·哈根认为，立法者利用“危机框架”来影响公众对犯罪的看法。罗纳德·里根总统将有组织犯罪助长的吸毒流行病的报道作为其危机框架的一部分。1984 年，他签署了《综合犯罪控制法案》(CCCA)，作为“反毒品战争”的一部分。CCCA 允许执法部门使用民事资产没收 (CAF) 来保留或出售其怀疑与非法活动有关的财产。各州立法者纷纷效仿并通过了自己的 CAF 法律。一些批评者认为，执法部门对 CAF 的使用不成比例地针对少数群体。我们利用种族威胁理论来研究加州少数族裔人口规模与 CAF 使用情况之间的联系。我们的分析使用了 19 年来向加州总检察长办公室提交的 CAF 案件。与种族威胁理论一致，我们发现一个司法管辖区的没收数量与记录的黑人居民百分比、犯罪净额和其他司法管辖区属性之间存在正相关关系。我们的结果支持了这样的担忧：执法部门已将 CAF 作为一种针对某些少数族裔社区不成比例地使用的技术。