Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Families & Youth

North Dakota passes cutting edge legislation

by

In the wake of the death of college student Andrew Sadek, North Dakota has passed Andrew’s Law, an important piece of legislation that sets a new standard in informant reform.  Some of the most heartening aspects of the bill are as follows:

  • It bans the use of informants who are 15 years old or younger. Only California and New Jersey currently ban the use of juvenile informants at the state level, and their cutoff is 12 years old.  
  • College police may not use college students as informants.
  • Police officers must be trained before they use informants.
  • All informant agreements must be in writing. The agreement must include, among other things, an explanation of what the informant is expected to do and what benefit they can expect to receive.  This is particularly important since young and vulnerable informants may not know what is expected of them, and law enforcement may continue to use them without clear boundaries or limits.
  • The agreement must tell the informant of their right to consult with counsel.
  • The agreement must warn the informant that the work may be dangerous.
  • The bill creates procedures for complaints, and an investigative process when an informant is killed.
This legislation is the culmination of a decade-long public debate over vulnerable informants that has been brewing since 23-year-old Rachel Hoffman was killed in Florida in 2008.  Since then, we have learned about the rampant, unregulated use of young informants, and how some campus police pressure college students into risking their education and even their lives.  North Dakota’s new law is one of the best responses so far.  More details from the Huffington Post here.

Interview with Rachel Hoffman’s mother Margie Weiss

by

Rachel Hoffman was a young informant who was killed in 2008.  Her parents’ activism and lobbying led to the passage of Rachel’s Law in Florida, which created new, more thoughtful police guidelines for handling informants.  Rachel’s mother, Margie Weiss, has remained a vocal activist and educator on the issue of informant reform. As she put it, “[s]cared kids get talked into assisting the police department or some law enforcement agency for some smaller crime, and then gets sent into a much larger, much more dangerous situation. Initially my daughter was arrested for having less than an ounce of pot…and she received a death sentence.” Here is the interview with her: How One Mother Turned Tragedy Into Triumph: The Rachel Morningstar Hoffman Story. 

FBI pressures Muslim immigrants to become informants

by

This Buzzfeed article– Welcome to America–Now Spy on Your Friends — describes how the FBI routinely interferes with the immigration process in order to exert pressure on immigrants from Muslim countries to provide information.  As the article puts it, “[w]hen Muslim immigrants apply to become citizens, they often find the process delayed for years without explanation. Then, when they are at wit’s end, they get a visit from the FBI, with an offer they don’t dare refuse.”

See also this 2013 ACLU report, Muslims Need Not Apply.

60 Minutes on young informants

by

On Sunday, 60 Minutes ran this segment entitled “Young people going undercover in war on drugs.”  The story covered several examples that have been in the news, including the recent Buzzfeed investigation into the student informant program at Ole Miss, the death of college student Andrew Sadek in North Dakota, and the death of Rachel Hoffman in Florida.  More examples are here.  For a thorough look at the ways that young informants are pressured and used, read the New Yorker article The Throwaways.