Using juvenile offenders as informants can be the opposite of rehabilitation: it keeps young people in contact with criminal networks and can exacerbate drug use and other dangerous behaviors. See this post on a Miami juvenile informant. But a new “restorative justice” approach in Texas offers a different model, in which juveniles charged with serious drug offenses are offered a chance at rehabilitation and skills training. Here’s the NYTimes article: New Home for Juveniles Recruited to the Drug Trade. Almost no states regulate the law enforcement policy of turning young people into informants (see Dennis, Juvenile Snitches); the Texas experiment reminds us that the juvenile system is first and foremost supposed to be rehabilitative.
Drug-related
Law review article on Rachel’s Law
The Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice has published this note, Toward Efficiency and Equity in Law Enforcement: “Rachel’s Law” and the Protection of Drug Informants. It focuses on an important provision in Rachel’s Law that was eliminated, that would have required police to provide potential informants with counsel. Here’s the abstract:
Following the murder of Rachel Morningstar Hoffman–a 23-year old college graduate–Florida passed “Rachel’s Law,” which established new guidelines for the police when dealing with confidential informants. Immediately prior to its enactment, lawmakers stripped Rachel’s Law of key provisions. These provisions required police to provide a potential informant with an attorney before agreeing to any deal. Opponents of these provisions argue that they hamstring law enforcement agencies in their efforts to prosecute drug crimes. Rather than serving as an obstacle to effective law enforcement, the attorney provision in the original version of Rachel’s Law enables efficient prosecution of crimes and protects minor drug offenders who may be unsuited for potentially dangerous undercover informant work. This Note recommends that the attorney provision be restored to Rachel’s Law, and encourages other states to enact similar statutes.
Miami New Times series on juvenile informant
Enriquez Bosco was 15 years old when he became an informant for the police, providing information against one of Miami’s most notorious gangs. This three-part series in the Miami New Times documents Bosco’s travails–including drug addition, rape, and ultimately deportation–from which his handlers failed to protect him and in some cases, may have brought on. From Part 2 of the story:
Enriquez’s story begins and ends in Nicaragua, where he was exiled this past June. Though he had cooperated with Miami police to bust as many as 30 gang members — including leaders of the infamous International Posse — authorities allowed him to be beaten, raped, and exiled to the country of his birth with barely a mention of his service. His crime: a guilty plea to possessing traces of cocaine, a third-degree felony that required two days in jail. It resulted from a long-ago drug habit that started when police employed him to make a drug buy.
Juvenile informants often incur terrible risks with little or no protection from the legal system. For an indepth look at the phenomenon, see Andrea Dennis, “Collateral Damage? Juvenile Snitches in America’s Wars on Drugs, Crime and Gangs,” 46 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1145 (2009).
Mexican cartel informant testifies in Texas
Here’s an unusually detailed glimpse into the activities of a Mexican informant who was part of the Zetas cartel while working for the DEA: Snitch tells of spying on Zetas. It’s unusual in part because of the generally secretive nature of informant use, but also more concretely because trials are infrequent and therefore informants rarely testify. On the extent to which informant/cartel members have become central to U.S. law enforcement in Mexico, see this previous post: NYT: Numerous Mexican drug informants benefit U.S. law enforcement.
NYT: Numerous Mexican drug informants benefit U.S. law enforcement
The New York Times features a story this week on the expanding recruitment and use of Mexican drug informants: U.S. Agencies Infiltrating Drug Cartels Across Mexico. The story describes American law enforcement as having “significantly built up networks of Mexican informants” and focuses on the substantial benefits that such criminal informants can provide. For example:
Informants have helped Mexican authorities capture or kill about two dozen high-ranking and midlevel drug traffickers, and sometimes have given American counternarcotics agents access to the top leaders of the cartels they are trying to dismantle.
The U.S. also learned of a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador through one of those DEA-developed informants. See Huffington Post: Iran Plot to Assassinate Saudi Ambassador Foiled by DOJ Sting.
The Times story notes that informants can also give rise to “complicated ethical issues,” including the fact that informants are typically working off their own crimes. Last year, NPR and Primetime ran stories illustrating the serious criminality that such informants may engage in, even while working for the government: NPR series on House of Death informant and Primetime: U.S. Customs authorizes informant to import cocaine.