Confiscation

Confiscation (from the Latin confiscatio "joining to the fiscus, i.e. transfer to the treasury") is a legal seizure by a government or other public authority. The word is also used, popularly, of spoliation under legal forms, or of any seizure of property as punishment or in enforcement of the law.

Scope and history

As a punishment, it differs from a fine in that it is not primarily meant to match the crime but rather reattributes the criminal's ill-gotten spoils (often as a complement to the actual punishment for the crime itself; still common with various kinds of contraband, such as protected living organisms) to the community or even aims to rob them of their socio-economic status, in the extreme case reducing them to utter poverty, or if he is condemned to death even denies them inheritance to the legal heirs. Meanwhile limited confiscation is often in function of the crime, the rationale being that the criminal must be denied the fruits of their fault, while the crime itself is rather punished in some other, independent way, such as physical punishments or even a concurring fine.