Snitching

Winner of the 2010 American Bar Association Honorable Mention for Books A Barnes & Noble Best Pick of 2009 Although it is nearly invisible to the public, criminal snitching has invaded the American legal system in risky and sometimes shocking ways. Snitchingis the first comprehensive analysis of this powerful and problematic practice, in which informant deals generate unreliable evidence, allow criminals to escape punishment, endanger the innocent, compromise the integrity of police work, and exacerbate tension between police and poor urban residents. Driven by dozens of real-life stories and debacles, the book exposes the destruction that snitching can cause in high-crime African American neighborhoods, and how using criminal informants renders our entire penal process more secretive and less fair. Alexandra A. Natapoff also uncovers the far-reaching legal, political, and cultural significance of snitching: from the war on drugs to hip hop music, from the FBI's mishandling of its murderous mafia informants to the new surge in white collar and terrorism informing. She explains how existing law functions and proposes new reforms. By delving into the secretive world of criminal informants, Snitchingreveals deep and often disturbing truths about the way American justice really works.

Alexandra Natapoff is a professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a nationally recognized expert on criminal snitching.

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
The Real Deal: Understanding Snitching	p. 15
Anatomy of an Informant Deal	p. 17
Police	p. 18
Prosecutors	p. 21
Defense Counsel	p. 23
The Crimes	p. 25
The Rewards	p. 27
Implications of Informant Practices	p. 29
Crime-Fighting Benefits	p. 29
Compromising the Purposes of Law Enforcement	p. 31
Who's in Charge around Here?	p. 35
Mishandling and Corruption	p. 36
Crime Victims	p. 38
Vulnerable Informants	p. 39
Witness Intimidation and the Spread of Violence	p. 42
Systemic Integrity and Trust	p. 43
To Catch a Thief: The Legal Rules of Snitching	p. 45
Creating and Rewarding Criminal Informants	p. 46
Police	p. 46
Prosecutors	p. 49
Sentencing and the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines	p. 50
Additional Benefits: Money and Drugs	p. 54
Using Informants as Investigative Tools	p. 55
Defendant Rights against Official Informant Use	p. 58
Legal Limits: What the Government Can't Do	p. 60
Informant Use in Comparative Perspective	p. 63
American Informant Law	p. 67
Beyond Unreliable	p. 69
Lying Informants	p. 70
Law Enforcement Dependence on Informants	p. 73
Juries	p. 76
When the Innocent Plead Guilty	p. 78
The Important but Limited Role of Procedural Protections	p. 81
Secret Justice	p. 83
Investigation	p. 84
Plea Bargaining	p. 89
Discovery	p. 91
Public Transparency and Executive Accountability	p. 94
Informants and the Internet	p. 97
Snitching in the 'Hood	p. 101
More Snitches	p. 103
More Crime	p. 109
More Violence	p. 111
Racial Focusing	p. 112
More Tension between Police and Community	p. 114
More Distrust	p. 116
Snitching as a Costly Social Policy	p. 118
ôStop Snitchingö	p. 121
ôIn the Gameö	p. 124
Distrust of the Police	p. 126
Witness Intimidation	p. 131
The Role of Rap and Hip Hop	p. 135
What Does ôStop Snitchingö Mean?	p. 138
How the Other Half Lives: White Collar and Other Kinds of Cooperation	p. 139
FBI Informants and Organized Crime	p. 141
Political Informants	p. 146
Agent Provocateurs and Infiltrators	p. 146
First Amendment Concerns	p. 147
Political Corruption	p. 149
The Sting	p. 150
Criminals Who Cooperate after the Fact	p. 151
White Collar Crime and Cooperation	p. 152
Individual White Collar Cooperators	p. 155
Corporate Cooperation	p. 158
Deferred Prosecution Agreements	p. 159
The Employer-Employee Problem	p. 163
White Collar versus Street Snitching	p. 165
Terrorism	p. 167
Reform	p. 175
Defining Informants	p. 177
Data Collection and Reporting on Informant Creation and Deployment	p. 179
Informant Crime Control and Reporting	p. 180
Legislative Limits on Crimes for Which Cooperation Credit Can Be Earned	p. 180
Limits on Crimes That Can Be Committed by Active Informants	p. 181
Reporting Informant Crimes	p. 182
Protecting Informants	p. 182
Witness Protection	p. 182
Increase Availability of Counsel	p. 183
Limit the Use of Juvenile, Mentally Disabled, and Addicted Informants	p. 184
Defense Informants	p. 186
Police Investigative Guidelines	p. 187
Prosecutorial Guidelines	p. 188
Heightened Judicial Scrutiny	p. 190
Criminal Procedure Reforms	p. 192
Discovery and Disclosure	p. 192
Reliability Hearings	p. 194
Corroboration	p. 196
Jury Instructions	p. 197
Improving Police-Community Trust and Communication	p. 199
Conclusion	p. 201
Governing through Crime, Governing through Informants	p. 201
The Infiltrator and the Spy: An Old Democracy Problem	p. 203
Criminal Snitching and the Dynamics of Power in Disadvantaged Black Communities: A New Civil Rights Challenge	p. 205
Underenforcement and the Failure to Protect People from Crime	p. 207
The Politics of ôStop Snitchingö	p. 209
Implications	p. 210
Notes	p. 213
Index	p. 253
About the Author	p. 260
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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