Question

Discuss the pros and cons of police investigations relying on PAID informants.

Answer 1

The positive aspect of using PAID informants is that;

Informants that are referred to as “snitches” are important investigative tools, as they provide led in criminal investigations. From street corners to jails to courthouses to prisons, every year the government negotiates thousands of deals with criminal offenders in which suspects can avoid arrest or punishment in exchange for information.

However, the negative aspect is that using them is very economically costly and it has some serious costs as informants often continue to commit crimes, while the information they provide may be infamously unreliable. For example, the Secret Service has discovered that one of their top former informants, Albert Gonzalez, was running one of the largest credit card data theft rings in the country. Gonzalez had used his connections with the government for promoting his illegal activities and also for tipping off other hackers on how to avoid detection.