A confiscation order is a post-conviction application to seek to remove from a Defendant the benefits that he has accrued from his crime.
Powers to confiscate from convicted defendants their benefit from crime were first introduced following the failure to recover funds in a drug trafficking case in 1978 known as Operation Julie. The House of Lords held that existing powers to forfeit items used in the commission of an offence could not be used "to strip the drug traffickers of the total profits of their unlawful enterprises." In response a confiscation regime was introduced in England & Wales by the Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986.Although confiscation was initially available only in drug trafficking cases,it was extended by the Criminal Justice Act 1988 to cover non-drug indictable offences and specified summary offences.