· Informants are the backbone of drug enforcement. Do away with them and prosecutions would grind to a halt. Yet, despite an informant’s outsized influence, nearly every aspect of their use...
According to Harvard law professor Alexandra Natapoff, the leading cause of wrongful capital conviction in the United States is dependence on jailhouse snitches who lie for personal gain.
HLT: How do people become criminal informants? And how and why do prosecutors use them? Alexandra Natapoff: You can’t understand criminalinformants in the American system if you don’t understand plea bargaining. Ninety-five percent of all criminal convictions in this country are the result of a plea deal, not of a trial. We almost never litigate g...See full list on hls.harvard.eduHLT: Given the coercive tools in the hands of police and prosecutors, how do they know the informants aren’t lying? Natapoff:Police and prosecutors, when they speak frankly about the use of informants, tell us that they rarely have any way of knowing whether their informants are telling the truth. And the more reliant on informants they are, the le...See full list on hls.harvard.eduHLT: You write that this system disproportionately impacts communities of color, underrepresented minorities, and heavily policed communities. Natapoff: There’s a chapter in the book about the community cost of using informants in which I zero in on a phenomenon that I think has been almost entirely overlooked in our penal system. Because we over-p...See full list on hls.harvard.eduHLT: Should we just get rid of this system altogether? Natapoff: Years ago, I was asked to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about the informant problem. It was in connection with the murder of Kathryn Johnston, a 92-year-old grandmother in Atlanta who was killed by police based on a bad informant tip. As I was testifying, Congressman Je...See full list on hls.harvard.eduOct 22, 2025 · Over 45 percent of all innocent people exonerated from death sentences were wrongfully convicted based on the testimony of a lying criminal informant. This makes snitches the leading cause of wrongful conviction in U.S. capital cases. Police sometimes use children as young as 14 as informants. Snitching has altered the ways in which investigations are conducted and recorded; it affects public record keeping by police and prosecutors, discovery practices, and what gets written down during plea negotiations. View allDec 16, 2025 · Understand how lawenforcement agencies manage confidential informantdatabases, covering specific tracking data, federal oversight, and court disclosure requirements. · Confidential informants aren’t the same as anonymous sources or tipsters. A confidential informant (“CI”) is someone that is typically facing criminal charges and lawenforcement convinces the CI to “work off” their criminal charges.
· Over 45 percent of all innocent people exonerated from death sentences were wrongfully convicted based on the testimony of a lying criminal informant. This makes snitches the leading cause of wrongful conviction in U.S. capital cases. Police sometimes use children as young as 14 as informants.
Snitching has altered the ways in which investigations are conducted and recorded; it affects public record keeping by police and prosecutors, discovery practices, and what gets written down during plea negotiations.
· Understand how lawenforcement agencies manage confidential informantdatabases, covering specific tracking data, federal oversight, and court disclosure requirements.
· Confidential informants aren’t the same as anonymous sources or tipsters. A confidential informant (“CI”) is someone that is typically facing criminal charges and lawenforcement convinces the CI to “work off” their criminal charges.
