Signs of a confidential informant4/30/2024 ![]() ![]() That plea market is highly deregulated relative to the trial space. Instead, in effect, we’ve created an enormous space for negotiation. Ninety-five percent of all criminal convictions in this country are the result of a plea deal, not of a trial. HLT: How do people become criminal informants? And how and why do prosecutors use them?Īlexandra Natapoff: You can’t understand criminal informants in the American system if you don’t understand plea bargaining. ![]() In a recent interview with Harvard Law Today, Natapoff explains how and why she believes “we have conferred on the government enormous unregulated power to leverage its extraordinary coercive criminal authority against almost anyone in exchange for almost anything.” Kreindler Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Natapoff has completely revised and updated her book the second edition accounts for and responds to the many developments in American informant law and culture over the past decade, some of which she has been involved in generating herself. “So, all you gotta do is snitch,” a third said, “and you can keep on dealing.”Īt that moment, Natapoff realized that children in heavily policed communities across America “understood that the justice system was being sold out in this very profound way on their very own streets.” It was also the genesis for her book, first published in 2009, “Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice.” “They ain’t doing their jobs!” said another student. Is that legal? I mean, can the police do that?” Natapoff explained that yes, police do have discretion to make deals with active drug dealers. “Police let dealers stay on the corner because they’re snitchin’. “I got a question,” said a young boy in her class, in a scene she recounts in her recently reissued book. But it was teaching a civil rights class in a local community center that showed her the deeper impact of the government’s use of informants. As a young federal public defender in Baltimore, Alexandra Natapoff represented numerous cooperators. ![]()
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