Critics of civil forfeiture have long argued that allowing law enforcement to take property and pocket the proceeds creates incentives to put profits ahead of justice. Chapman University economist Bart J. Wilson and co-author Michael Preciado designed a cutting-edge experiment to see whether the rules of civil forfeiture in fact change behavior, and if so, how.

The results suggest that forfeiture abuse isn’t the result of a few “bad apples,” but bad laws that encourage bad behavior—it’s not the players so much as the game.