The final chapter of the longest trial in Georgia history has finally come to an end now that a Fulton County Superior Court judge has ruled that law enforcement must return the property they confiscated from Young Thug during his 2022 arrest.
The Atlanta rapper had spent more than 300 days on trial between November 2023 and October 2024 when he accepted a guilty plea in the massive racketeering case against him and 27 others brought by the Fulton County district attorney’s office.
His seized property included $149,426 in cash, eight cars, six firearms, and assorted jewelry.
And while the ruling to return Young Thug’s belongings was in his favor, Black, Hispanic, and low-income communities across the country have borne the brunt of civil asset forfeitures, a legal mechanism for law enforcement to confiscate cash and property thought to be connected to organized crime, for years.
“Most cases of civil asset forfeiture in Georgia are not targeting high-level, organized criminal activity as intended but are instead impacting low-income individuals who are rarely charged with any crime,” according to a 2022 report by the Georgia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
That year, the committee found that civil asset forfeiture has a disproportionate impact on Black people and several other federally protected classes across the state.
Despite this, in his 2026 legislative priorities unanimously passed by the Atlanta City Council, Mayor Andre Dickens is asking the state legislature to increase penalties for street racing, which would allow the Atlanta Police Department to seize more vehicles.
The mayor’s office did not respond to Capital B Atlanta’s request for comment.
If the mayor and City Council are successful, it wouldn’t be the first time they have been able to impact state legislation in their favor. Five years ago, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill that established several of the penalties Dickens is seeking to increase.
“It is no secret that Atlanta has a crime problem,” Kemp said at the bill signing in May 2021, confirming that the new law was targeted at the metro Atlanta area.
Now Atlanta officials want the state to give police the ability to seize more vehicles involved in street racing. Civil advocates say they are concerned.
“You expanded civil asset forfeiture to include street racing, and according to you [there is still] a problem. Now you’re coming back to the same body asking for the same thing. Why would you not think you’re going to get the same result, which is, it’s not going to be effective in addressing the conduct,” Tiffany Roberts, public policy director at the Southern Center for Human Rights told Capital B Atlanta.
During her time practicing as a criminal defense attorney, first as a public defender and then in a private practice, Roberts had clients regularly assume the civil asset forfeiture notice they received in the mail was part of their criminal case and items seized during an arrest would be automatically returned if they win their case.
“People think, ‘I got arrested, my goal is to be acquitted or to have my case dismissed,’ and all of the consequences from this arrest will then be addressed,” she said.
Unlike in a criminal case, however, defendants are not entitled to legal counsel in an asset forfeiture case. That can make it cost prohibitive for people to fight for their property to be returned.
“Navigating the legal system is very hard,” said Matthew West, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Justice. “The idea that a regular person can understand all the legalese to be able to file paperwork at the right time and maybe show up to court multiple times can really get in the way.”
Although the modern practice of civil asset forfeiture dates back to the 1980s, law enforcement agencies in Georgia have only had to report their revenue and expenditures from confiscated property since 2015.
Between 2015 and 2018, the Institute for Justice found that cash made up 58% of all forfeited assets in Georgia. Because the practice was created to target large scale criminal operations, state policy requires any forfeited cash or property — other than a vehicle — must be worth at least $250. Half of all forfeited currency in that period was worth less than $540.
In 2025, the Fulton County district attorney’s office took in $43,946.29 revenue from forfeitures and had $54,485.07 in expenditures from the forfeiture fund. While the sheriff’s office reported no revenue or expenditures under state law, under federal law it took in $127,249.74 in revenue from forfeitures and spent $39,426.02.
Unlike for state forfeitures, federal asset forfeiture policy has a higher value threshold for assets to be eligible for forfeiture: $5,000 for cash and vehicles, $10,000 for aircrafts and vessels, and $1,000 for all other personal property
According to West, however, state agencies often partner with federal law enforcement because they allow for more forfeitures and the agency can keep up to 80% of the proceeds.
“The federal level, arguably, has some of the most lenient [civil asset forfeiture] rules nationwide,” he said.
Earlier this month the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia reported $8 million in forfeited assets for the past fiscal year that ended last September.
APD’s 2025 report is still in progress, according to a spokesperson. Reports are due by Jan. 31 each year, but Dan Alban, co-director of the National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse at the Institute for Justice, said late and missing reports are fairly common.
As a national expert on issues of civil asset forfeiture, Alban provided written testimony to the Georgia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for their 2022 report.
According to the website for the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia, which is responsible for collecting and maintaining the reports, APD has mostly complied with reporting requirements over the past decade — only the 2021 report is missing.
In 2020, the Institute for Justice gave Georgia’s civil forfeiture laws a D-minus based on three categories:
- A low standard of proof for government agencies to prove the cash or property was connected to criminal activity.
- If property is seized by law enforcement from someone other than the owner, in order for the owner to get their property back they must prove they are innocent and not connected to the alleged criminal activity.
- There is a financial incentive for law enforcement to engage in asset forfeiture because up to 100% of the proceeds can go back to their agency.
“Those three factors are what are most closely linked to abuses of forfeiture, and of those three, the profit incentive is what has the highest correlation to forfeiture abuses,” Alban said.
Bills to reform Georgia’s asset forfeiture laws by halting asset forfeiture until criminal proceedings are finished and directing forfeiture funds to the Indigent Care Trust Fund and Safety Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children Fund instead of local district attorneys failed to gain enough support during the 2019-2020 legislative session.
“Georgia has terrible forfeiture laws,” Alban said. “There are a lot of states that we give a D-minus to because of the same reasons. On the reporting side, I would say Georgia is an outlier in terms of having these reporting obligations that law enforcement agencies frequently fail to comply with.”
The future of expanding asset forfeiture remains uncertain now that the General Assembly is halfway through the current legislative session and no bills have had their first reading on the House or Senate floors yet.
