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Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

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  • Welcome

    Criminal informants provide important information to the justice system, but they also pose serious risks. We hope this website will help attorneys, journalists, advocates, and families to better understand this vital area of public policy.

  • Wrongful Convictions

    Criminal informants are famously unreliable. Jailhouse snitch testimony often leads to wrongful conviction. Over 45 percent of all innocent people exonerated from death sentences were wrongfully convicted based on the testimony of a lying criminal informant. This makes snitches the leading cause of wrongful conviction in U.S. capital cases.

  • Young Informants

    Police sometimes use children as young as 14 as informants. These children may be exposed to drugs, violence, and other criminal activities as they work to get information for their handlers. Some have been killed. California and New Jersey have laws restricting the practice: in other states police have discretion to use juvenile informants.

  • Informant Crimes

    Some informants are serious criminals who receive leniency for their own crimes. The FBI has been known to use murderers as informants. Many jurisdictions permit drug dealers to continue selling drugs in exchange for cooperation. In 2011, the crimes committed by FBI informants alone totaled over 5,600.

  • Urban communities pay the price

    Urban Communities Pay the Price

    Informants are a staple of drug enforcement. This means that where drug enforcement is heaviest, informant activity is also heaviest. Because drug arrests occur disproportionately in low-income African American neighborhoods, those residents must live with the crime, violence, and distrust that go with criminal informant use.

Reform

Numerous states are rethinking their criminal informant policies. Some have passed laws restricting the use of jailhouse snitch witnesses. Some have created new rules for disclosure and accountability. The law governing criminal informants has changed enormously over the past ten years, and will look very different again in another decade.

The Book

Read the Introduction

Families and Youth

Many families and young people must grapple with informant issues. Police may pressure college students, or even children as young as 14, into becoming informants. Very few states have laws protecting minors or other vulnerable people from the pressures and consequences of informing.

Recent Posts

  • Gerald Shur, Architect of Witness Protection Program, Dies at 86
    by Alexandra Natapoff
    February 14, 2021
    Gerald Shur was a DOJ lawyer who started the federal witness security program (WITSEC) in 1970. The program elevated the use of high-profile informants and […]
  • FBI using informants to surveil Black Lives Matter activists
    by Alexandra Natapoff
    February 13, 2021
    This piece in the Intercept reviews official documents showing, among other things, how the FBI used informants to surveil Black Lives Matter activists after Ferguson […]
  • New Jersey AG issues jailhouse informant directive
    by Alexandra Natapoff
    February 7, 2021
    The New Jersey Attorney General issued Directive 2020-11 which requires all state prosecutors to seek supervisory approval before using jailhouse informants. That approval process requires, […]

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