332
Opinion of the Court
ment has not proceeded against the currency itself, but has instead sought and obtained a criminal conviction of respondent personally. The forfeiture serves no remedial purpose, is designed to punish the offender, and cannot be imposed upon innocent owners.
Section 982(a)(1) thus descends not from historic in rem forfeitures of guilty property, but from a different historical tradition: that of in personam, criminal forfeitures. Such forfeitures have historically been treated as punitive, being part of the punishment imposed for felonies and treason in the Middle Ages and at common law. See W. McKechnie, Magna Carta 337-339 (2d ed. 1958); 2 F. Pollock & F. Mait-land, The History of English Law 460-466 (2d ed. 1909). Although in personam criminal forfeitures were well established in England at the time of the founding, they were rejected altogether in the laws of this country until very recently.7
7 The First Congress explicitly rejected in personam forfeitures as punishments for federal crimes, see Act of Apr. 30, 1790, ch. 9, § 24, 1 Stat. 117 ("[N]o conviction or judgment . . . shall work corruption of blood, or any forfeiture of estate"), and Congress reenacted this ban several times over the course of two centuries. See Rev. Stat. § 5326 (1875); Act of Mar. 4, 1909, ch. 321, § 341, 35 Stat. 1159; Act of June 25, 1948, ch. 645, § 3563, 62 Stat. 837, codified at 18 U. S. C. § 3563 (1982 ed.); repealed effective Nov. 1, 1987, Pub. L. 98-473, 98 Stat. 1987.
It was only in 1970 that Congress resurrected the English common law of punitive forfeiture to combat organized crime and major drug trafficking. See Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, 18 U. S. C. § 1963, and Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, 21 U. S. C. § 848(a). In providing for this mode of punishment, which had long been unused in this country, the Senate Judiciary Committee acknowledged that "criminal forfeiture . . . represents an innovative attempt to call on our common law heritage to meet an essentially modern problem." S. Rep. No. 91-617, p. 79 (1969). Indeed, it was not until 1992 that Congress provided for the criminal forfeiture of currency at issue here. See 18 U. S. C. § 982(a).
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