Cite as: 518 U. S. 267 (1996)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
Court went on to consider whether the sanction "as applied in the individual case," id., at 448, amounted to punishment. It answered that question in the affirmative, for the applied sanction created a "tremendous disparity" with the amount of harm the defendant actually caused. Id., at 452. The Court explained that, as a rule, a fixed penalty that would otherwise serve remedial ends could still punish the defendant if the imposed amount was out of all proportion to the damage done.4
The second category of sanctions—civil forfeitures—was the subject of Austin. In that case, the Government sought to forfeit the petitioner's mobile home and auto body shop as instrumentalities of the drug trade under 21 U. S. C. §§ 881(a)(4) and (a)(7) because he had sold cocaine there. Applying Halper's definition of punishment, see 509 U. S., at 610, 621, we held that §§ 881(a)(4) and (a)(7) must be considered to qualify as such, partly because forfeitures have historically been understood as punishment and more importantly because no remedial purpose underlay the sanction the statute created. Merely compensating the Government for its costs, as in Halper, could not justify the forfeiture scheme because "[t]he value of the conveyances and real property forfeitable under §§ 881(a)(4) and (a)(7) . . . can vary so dramatically that any relationship between the Government's actual costs and the amount of the sanction is merely coincidental." 509 U. S., at 622, n. 14. Accordingly, we held that any forfeiture was subject to the constraints of the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment.
4 The Court stated the full rule as follows: "Where a defendant previously has sustained a criminal penalty and the civil penalty sought in the subsequent proceeding bears no rational relation to the goal of compensating the Government for its loss, but rather appears to qualify as 'punishment' in the plain meaning of the word, then the defendant is entitled to an accounting of the Government's damages and costs to determine if the penalty sought in fact constitutes a second punishment." United States v. Halper, 490 U. S. 435, 449-450 (1989).
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