Federal prisoners use snitching for personal gain
Caught this via elsewhere. It is an USA Today article two weeks ago and the sub-titles say enough:
Quote:
How snitches pay for freedom; Court records show that federal inmates in Atlanta tried to buy information about other criminals to win early freedom. (Shortly after)....At least 48,895 federal convicts — one of every eight — had their prison sentences reduced in exchange for helping government investigators, probe shows.
Link:http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...-sale/1762013/
The best bit - for an outsider - is the final chart 'Who Cooperates Most'.
The trouble with using police informants in the US
A lengthy BBC article on snitching or being an informant in the USA, taken from a BBC World radio broadcast; it opens with:
Quote:
Some law enforcement agencies in the US use informants in as many as 90% of their drug cases. But there are surprisingly few rules on how informants are used and a groundswell of calls for the system to be reformed.
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21939453
Interesting set of proposals at state level to regulate this.