Confidential Informant - Management and Control (From Critical Issues in Criminal Investigation, P 29-41, 1984, Michael Palmiotto, ed. - See NCJ-99323)

• NCJ Number: 99326
• Author(s): J R Farris
• Date Published: 1984
• Length: 13 pages
• Sale Source: Pilgrimage
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article examines police informants' motivations and describes traditional (informal) and formal models for managing informants.

Abstract

Informants may cooperate with police for financial gain, to eliminate criminal competition, for revenge, to mitigate punishment, due to vanity, or out of civic-mindedness. They may refuse to provide information because of their dislike of police, police arrogance, police failure to provide adequate feedback or security, fear of reprisal, and police agencies' failure to develop policies facilitating communication with the public. Two dominant paradigms of informant management and control, traditional-informal and managerial-formal, are described. Under the first model, target selection and informant selection/recruitment are discretionary, confidential funds are expended on a case-by-case basis, and identity of and access to the informant is handled solely by the police contact. Under the second model, an appointed officer manages the overall informant program on a full-time basis; investigators are provided with guidelines formalizing police-informant relations and providing specifications for informant activities, expenditure of funds, and the handling of high-risk informants; and a systems approach is used to target definition, selection, and prioritization. Individual agencies can draw on elements from either or both of these managerial models to create or improve their own informant programs. Ten notes and 12 references are provided.