Designing Randomized Trials of Informer Recruitment and Management Policies

1. Designing Randomized Trials of Informer Recruitment and Management Policies Cody W. Telep George Mason University (USA) 6 July 2011

2. Police Investigations: Building an Evidence Base • “Although criminal investigation is a fundamental mission of the police, there has been surprisingly little scientific inquiry in this area” (Horvath et al., 2001) • Evidence-Based Policing Matrix: only 2 of the 103 total abstracts mention “detective” • In the U.S., detectives make up about 16% of sworn officers, but we know very little about the effectiveness of their actions, even though they play a major role in one major performance measure of the police, clearance rates

3. Police Informers: Building an Evidence Base • “Though widely acknowledged as vital to law enforcement, social scientists have largely ignored the practice of confidential informing.” (Miller, 2011: 203) • Evidence-Based Policing Matrix: only 1 of the 103 total abstracts mentions “informant” or “informer” • Some focus on cost-effectiveness, but research largely descriptive and focused on issues of threatened legitimacy as a result of close police contact with known criminals

4. Benefits of Randomized Experiments • High internal validity- would give us new insights into investigations and informers that are more believable than existing research • Helps inform policing practice and policy- would provide a better sense of what works (and what doesn’t) in terms of informer practices to increase intelligence, increase clearances, and reduce crime • Provide a “simple” answer for police leaders- statistics behind experiments are not exceedingly complex

5. Feasibility of Randomized Experiments • Although there are potential ethical concerns, experimentation is possible in the case of recruiting and managing police informers • Treatment (i.e. investigator time) is limited and so randomization could provide an unbiased way of using resources • Not conducting any rigorous research is perhaps just as bad- current practices are often based on informal policies or hunches that could be wrong • Nothing about an experiment would need to threaten the confidentiality of informers

6. What kinds of experiments? • Recruitment experiments • Examining how different approaches to recruiting informers lead to differential outcomes in terms of number of informers recruited, amount of intelligence gathered, cases solved, and crime prevented • Management experiments • Examining how different approaches to managing informers lead to differential outcomes in terms of intelligence gathered, cases solved, and crime prevented

7. Unit of Analysis • Experiments on informers could be carried out on multiple levels of analysis • Perhaps the most obvious is at the level of the individual informer- randomly allocating potential or current informers • Could randomly allocate administrative units (e.g. prisons) • Could randomly allocate geographic areas within a jurisdiction (e.g. drug markets)

8. Outcome Measures • Number of informers recruited and level of informer cooperation (legitimacy) • Amount of usable intelligence gathered • Number of cases solved (clearance rates) • Crime prevented (crime rates) • Costs and cost-effectiveness

9. Informer Experiments: 3 examples • Recruiting informers in a prison/jail setting • Managing informers through interview/questioning techniques • Recruiting and managing informers in crime hot spots

10. Recruiting Informers in Prisons/Jails • Examine traditional informal methods of choosing who to recruit vs. use of research to guide recruitment policies • Example: randomly assign prisoners to either a control group (traditional methods) or a treatment group that uses statistical evidence (e.g. the findings of Jeffrey, 2011) to guide recruitment procedures • Outcomes • Proportion of prisoners successfully recruited • Amount of usable intelligence gathered

11. Managing Informers • Cooper’s (2010) work suggests that many who agree to be informers while in custody cease to be cooperative upon release • Could develop experiments to examine ways to better keep recruited informers committed to providing intelligence • The impact of how investigators interact with informers (procedural justice) • The impact of bureaucratic control systems (particularly on how intelligence is gathered and shared)

12. Managing Informers: Procedural Justice • Incorporate Tyler’s (1990, 2004) research on legitimacy and procedural justice into informer management procedures • Control group that receives “standard” interviews from detectives • E.g. may involve deception, typically more confrontational • Treatment group is interviewed by detectives who have received special training on procedural justice and enhancing police legitimacy • E.g. interviewing should focus on detective being respectful, transparent, unbiased

13. Managing Informers: Procedural Justice • There could be differences across the groups in levels of long-term informer cooperation/compliance with police • Tyler’s research would suggest that a procedural justice framework might enhance informer cooperation • Could also measure informer perceptions of legitimacy of the police • Ideally, if legitimacy levels are enhanced, these informers may avoid future involvement in criminal activity

14. Informers in Hot Spots Policing • Hot spots policing has a strong evidence base for reducing crime and disorder (Braga, 2007) • Would combining hot spots enforcement with an explicit effort to recruit informers increase crime control effectiveness? • 3 group experimental study of hot spots (e.g. drug markets, gun crime areas): • Control group: receives standard policing as usual • “Standard” hot spots group: receives intensive policing • Informer hot spots group: receives intensive policing AND explicit focus on recruiting and maintaining informers in the hot spot areas

15. Informers in Hot Spots Policing cont. • Officers working in the informer hot spots group could receive additional training on managing informers and incentives to maximize informer recruitment and intelligence gathering • Outcomes: • Would expect informer hot spots group to lead to increases in intelligence gathered and informers recruited • Could examine experimentally whether there were differences in crime and disorder outcomes across the three groups

16. Conclusions • Little or no rigorous evidence related to recruiting and managing police informers • There are a number of ways we can think about running randomized experiments on informers • Experimentation is an important way to ensure informer policies are as effective and efficient as possible