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Opinion of Stevens, J.
had used the property in connection with the commission of a crime. The forfeiture of this property was unquestionably "a penalty that had absolutely no correlation to any damages sustained by society or to the cost of enforcing the law." United States v. Ward, 448 U. S., at 254. As we unanimously recognized in Halper, formalistic distinctions that obscure the obvious practical consequences of governmental action disserve the " 'humane interests' " protected by the Double Jeopardy Clause. 490 U. S., at 447, quoting United States ex rel. Marcus v. Hess, 317 U. S. 537, 554 (1943) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). Fidelity to both reason and precedent dictates the conclusion that this forfeiture was "punishment" for purposes of the Double Jeopardy Clause.16
II
The Government also argues that the word "jeopardy" refers only to a criminal proceeding, and that our cases precluding two punishments for the same offense apply only to situations in which the first punishment was imposed after conviction of a crime. In this case the civil forfeiture proceeding antedated the filing of the criminal charge. Since the civil case was not a "jeopardy," the argument runs, the criminal case was the first, rather than the second, jeopardy. This argument is foreclosed by our decisions in Halper and Kurth Ranch.
Although the point was not expressly mentioned in either case, both holdings necessarily rested on the assumption that the civil proceeding in which the second punishment was imposed was a "jeopardy" within the meaning of the Fifth
16 As I have emphasized, the determination that 21 U. S. C. § 881(a)(7) is a punitive statute is perfectly consistent with a conclusion that other types of sanctions are remedial. For example, I would expect that many types of administrative licensing sanctions are remedial in the relevant sense of our cases. See Comment, Administrative Driver's License Suspension: A Remedial Tool That is Not in Jeopardy, 45 Am. U. L. Rev. 1151 (1996) (arguing that suspension of a driver's license after conviction for drunken driving is a remedial sanction under the logic of Halper, Austin, and Kurth Ranch).
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