Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Legislation

Report: Confidential Informants in New Jersey

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It’s rare to get this much data about informant practices. The New Jersey ACLU has released this important study of confidential informant practices across the state, based on scores of documents, cases, interviews, and government policies. According to the study,

The use of informants in drug law enforcement in New Jersey was found to be largely informal, undocumented, and unsupervised, and therefore vulnerable to error and corruption.

Among many findings, the study determined that informant use led to the following problems: manufactured criminal conduct, financial abuse, police coersion, harm to the informants, unreliability, misuse of juveniles, using “big fish” to catch “little fish,” and the widespread violation of laws and guidelines. The study proposes reforms, and apparently a number of New Jersey counties have already responded with improved policies.

California passes jailhouse informant corroboration law

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Governor Brown just signed important new legislation requiring corroboration before a jailhouse informant can testify. SF Chronicle story here: Law requires corroboration of cellmate’s testimony. California joins Texas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Idaho, and several other states that require safeguards to counteract the well-documented unreliability of jailhouse snitch testimony. Here is part of the bill:

A jury or judge may not convict a defendant, find a special circumstance true, or use a fact in aggravation based on the uncorroborated testimony of an in-custody informant.

An “in custody informant” is defined as: “a person, other than a codefendant, percipient witness, accomplice, or coconspirator, whose testimony is based on statements allegedly made by the defendant while both the defendant and the informant were held in within a city or county jail, state penal institution, or correctional institution.” Full disclosure: I testified in support of this legislation.

NYU Law School report criticizes use of domestic terrorism informants

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NYU Law School’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice has just released this report: Targeted and Entrapped: Manufacturing the “Homegrown Threat” in the United States. The report examines three recent high profile domestic terrorism cases, in all of which informants played a central role, and argues that the use of compensated informants is creating the perception of a threat in U.S. Muslim communities where none may have existed before. From the executive summary:

Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has targeted Muslims in the United States by sending paid, untrained informants into mosques and Muslim communities. This practice has led to the prosecution of more than 200 individuals in terrorism-related cases. The government has touted these cases as successes in the so-called war against terrorism. However, in recent years, former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, local lawmakers, the media, the public, and community-based groups have begun questioning the legitimacy and efficacy of this practice, alleging that–in many instances–this type of policing, and the resulting prosecutions, constitute entrapment.

In the cases this Report examines, the government’s informants held themselves out as Muslims and looked in particular to incite other Muslims to commit acts of violence. The government’s informants introduced and aggressively pushed ideas about violent jihad and, moreover, actually encouraged the defendants to believe it was their duty to take action against the United States. In two of the three cases, the government relied on the defendants’ vulnerabilities–poverty and youth, for example–in its inducement methods. In all three cases, the government selected or encouraged the proposed locations that the defendants would later be accused of argeting. In all three cases, the government also provided the defendants with, or encouraged the defendants to acquire, material evidence, such as weaponry or violent videos, which would later be used to convict them.

The report argues that the ways that the U.S. government uses informants to target Muslims threatens such basic legal principles as the right to a fair trial, the right to non-discrimination, and the rights to freedom of religion and expression. The report concludes with numerous policy recommendations.

New report on informants in Mississippi’s criminal justice system

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Justice Strategies and the ACLU have issued a highly critical report entitled: Numbers Game: The Vicious Cycle of Incarceration in Mississippi’s Criminal Justice System. The report identifies three main problems in Mississippi: harsh sentencing policies, the misuse of multi-jurisdictional drug task forces, and the heavy recruitment and use of drug informants. The informant section analyzes numerous issues, including the widespread use of snitches in low income African American communities throughout Mississippi, and the social harm that this causes. For example:

A similar pattern and practice of using neighbors and friends as confidential informants is occurring in Flora, Mississippi, a tiny town of some 1,500 residents in Madison County–an area where complaints of racial profiling are common. Local police frequently threaten low-level drug users and sellers, coercing them to “snitch” on their friends.

Josephine, is a grandmother and lifelong Flora resident. According to her, Flora has never experienced a significant drug problem…. Josephine maintains that there are at least three known informants among the young people in Flora, and that many residents are frustrated with the local police because they are forcing young people to turn each other in. With considerable nostalgia, she recalls that people in Flora used to be very neighborly; they would talk about their families, joys and troubles, but now, “everybody don’t fool with each other anymore. People keeping to themselves and not inviting each other in their homes.” She says that people are afraid to go out at night. “Most young guys are scared to walk the streets at night because the cops mess with them.” When her 20-year-old nephew does go out at night, she fears for his safety, not because of other Flora residents, but because of law enforcement agents: “Cops know how to scare you into snitching.”
Some community residents view the use of CIs as not only tolerating criminal activity, but also enabling it–greatly diminishing the legitimacy of policing in their eyes. Another Mississippi mother, Sandra, says that her son’s informer was allowed to continue his own criminal enterprise while turning in her son:

“They use people who already have a felony conviction and should be in prison, and give them ‘paper time.’ The week before they arrested my son, they search and arrest this guy. He had weed, crack and money on him. They gave it back to him and let him go on ‘paper time’ for snitching on my son.”

The report concludes by proposing numerous reforms, including the establishment of an informant registry to keep track of people who are trying to work off their own criminal charges, a requirement that law enforcement report crimes committed by their informants, and a ban on using juvenile snitches.

San Francisco to review snitch policy

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The San Francisco police department has announced that it is reviewing its use of criminal informants and will provide additional training to officers. The decision comes in the wake of allegations of misconduct against several officers. From the SF Examiner story:

Last Thursday, the day after allegations of illegal searches and seizures against six officers were made public and as gang tensions mounted in the Mission district, police station captains received a message on their department BlackBerrys to stop using confidential sources — known on the street as snitches — until further notice.

The directive came from the head of investigations, Cmdr. David Lazar, and was rescinded within an hour, according to interim police Chief Jeff Godown.

“It was an error,” he said. Lazar also acknowledged the mistake, calling it a “premature blast out.”

But before the order could be reversed, complaints rained down from captains. Capt. Greg Corrales was trying to stop retaliatory gang warfare in the Mission when the order came in. It would have made police work nearly impossible, Corrales said. The department announced that it will review its use of confidential informants this week and officers will receive additional training. . . . “Confidential informants are done on a daily basis and there are administrative issues,” Godown said. “We started looking into this months ago.”

Informant policies are often intimately associated with police misconduct, in part because informant use is secretive and easily subject to abuse. In the Los Angeles Rampart scandal, for example, police used informants to plant evidence and cover up police shootings. Part of the post-Rampart reform involved curtailing informant use by street officers. See Los Angeles Times story here: LAPD Eases Rules on Street Sources.