A police informant is a person who provides privileged information, or information intended to be intimate, concealed, or secret, about a person or organization to an agency, often a government or law enforcement agency. Informants are officially known as confidential human sources (CHS), or criminal informants (CI) within the law-enforcement world. They are used in everyday police work, including homicide and narcotics investigations, and are extremely common. Informants are often criminals who cooperate with the police in exchange for a reduced charge, sentence, or immunity from prosecution, depending on the judicial system. There are several types of informants, including:
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The accused: People who were caught committing a crime and are offered a deal by either police officers or attorneys. They are told to work for the police, and any possible charges for their crime will either never be filed or they will be dismissed once the police are satisfied with the number of cases they bring in.
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The victim: People who have been victimized by a crime and provide information to the police to help solve the crime.
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The career informant: People who might have had a minor record of misdemeanor crimes in the past or some low-level drug crimes, but they have since gone straight. However, their past record and perhaps any connections they may have retained gives them the street credibility to pierce certain social circles associated with criminal activity or drug use and trafficking. The career informant is essentially an employee of law enforcement and is motivated to get paid for their work.
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Police officers themselves: Police officers who provide information to other law enforcement agencies about criminal activity.
Informants are often shown leniency for their own crimes in exchange for information, or they may turn out to be dishonest. The police maintain that informants are not made immune from prosecution should they break the law in the course of their informant career, but in practice, much of the lawbreaking of the informant is overlooked in the interest of maintaining them as a valuable information source. The relationship between the police and the informant is tenuous, and the police must develop expertise in handling confidential informants.
