Fully informed? A methodology for assessing covert informant coverage in policing and law enforcement
| Author | Colin Atkinson |
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X19871325 |
Article
Fully informed?
A methodology
for assessing covert
informant coverage
in policing and law
enforcement
Colin Atkinson
University of the West of Scotland, South Lanarkshire, Glasgow, UK
Abstract
The use of covert informants has become a mainstay of contemporary policing in the
United Kingdom as police, security and enforcement agencies tackle a range of crimes.
Within such agencies, the need to understand the extent to which covert informants can
provide information on issues of interest has become essential to effective practice.
Drawing upon social penetration theory, this article proposes a new methodology to
support police and law enforcement agencies in systematically mapping the breadth and
depth of informant coverage. The future testing of such a methodology in practice will
represent a critical area for further development and debate.
Keywords
Informants, covert policing, intelligence, analysis, social penetration theory
Introduction
The use of informants has become a mainstay of contemporary policing in the United
Kingdom (UK) as police, security, intelligence and enforcement agencies seek to tackle
a range of crimes. Covert informants are oftentimes referred to in these fields of practice
as agents or ‘sources’ (Ingle and Staniforth, 2017: 124). Outside of such fields, and
Corresponding author:
Colin Atkinson, University of the West of Scotland, Stephenson Place, Hamilton International Park, South
Lanarkshire, Glasgow G72 0LH, UK.
Email: colin.atkinson@uws.ac.uk
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
2021, Vol. 94(1) 3–19
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0032258X19871325
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particularly among criminals, they are pejoratively termed grasses, touts, snitches or rats.
From this rich and varied vernacular, Ben Fitzpatrick (2009) has highlighted the emer-
gence of the specific legislative term Covert Human Intelligence Source (CHIS); a new
nomenclature that Charl Crous (2009) has suggested is indicative of the modernisation
and professionalisation of police–informant relationships. Developments over the past
two decades have resulted in the formal regulation and professionalisation of police
informant work, but the use of informants in policing has a long history (see Clark,
2007: 431; Shane, 2016: 2). In fact, in the ‘house of high-policing’ (Sheptycki, 2007),
with its focus on crimes such as terrorism and organised crime, this tactic has long been
considered as ‘typical’ (Manning, 2016: 25). Beyond the traditional use of informants in
high policing, the tactic is now also commonplace in everyday ‘low policing’ both within
and beyond the police service itself.
1
The current legislative framework in the UK –
manifest in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the Regulati on of
Investigatory Powers (Scotland) Act 2000 – provides the legitimacy and statutory foot-
ing for both high and low policing actors to legally use informants in intrusive surveil-
lance operations (Williamson, 2008: 3).
Despite the long-held proclivity by policing and law enforcement agencies in the UK
and beyond to use covert human informants (Innes, 2000: 358; Schreiber, 2001: 301),
academic inquiry in this area has been relatively circumscribed, not least due to the
difficulties of researching this hidden area of practice (see Norris and Wilson, 2016).
Such a situation is particularly lamentable given the attention initially afforded to this
topic in some of the pioneering texts of police studies (see Manning, 1977; Skolnick,
2011), and it remains reasonable to concur with Basia Spalek (2014: 831) that research
into the role and use of CHIS is rare. Within the small number of studies dedicated to
understanding informants in policing and law enforcement, there has been a tendency to
focus upon the legal frameworks regulating this activity or the ethical implications of this
tactic (see Cooper and Murphy, 1997; Gill, 2009; Harfield, 2009; MacVean and Neyr-
oud, 2012; Omand, 2006; Shane, 2016). Nevertheless, a smaller subset of studies, cov-
ering a range of jurisdictions, has discussed the day-to-day practice of police informant
work and the use of this tactic in policing operations (see Bacon, 2016; Billingsley,
2009a, 2009b; Crous, 2009, 2011; Dabney and Tewksbury, 2016; Innes, 2000; Lowe,
2015; Rajakaruna et al, 2013). A recent and still developing literature has also emerged
in the discipline of psychology, particularly coalescing around the evaluation of methods
used to gather human intelligence (see Evans et al., 2013; Granhag et al., 2015; Olesz-
kiewicz et al., 2017).
A recent study (Atkinson, 2019) has highlighted the emerging role of intelligence
analysis in police informant work in Scotland, and particularly the involvement of
civilian intelligence a nalysts both in the target ing of prospective inform ants and in
developing an understanding of the ‘coverage’ provided by existing informants. Infor-
mant coverage is understood in this context as the extent to which existing informants –
the informant ‘stable’ – have access to, and can provide reporting on, the people, places
and other entities of current and emerging investigative interest. Yet Atkinson (2019)
also noted how analysts involved in the assessment of informant co verage lacked a
commonly shared, well-recognised, rigorous and robust methodology to underpin such
everyday practice, often leaving analysts to de vise such methodologies in isolation.
4The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 94(1)
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