Informant

An Informant is someone who provides information to law enforcement agencies.

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Quite frequently, the informant will themselves be a criminal and in such cases they will usually provide information in order to obtain lenient treatment for themselves. Some informants may provide information over an extended period of time in return for money or for police to overlook their own criminal activities. Quite often someone will become an informant following their arrest. The CIA has been criticized for letting major drug lords out of prison as informants.

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Informants are most common in the world of organized crime because, by its very nature, organized crime involves many people who are aware of each other's guilt in a variety of illegal activities. There have also been informants within terrorist organizations, such as the IRA.

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Informants are regarded as traitors by their former criminal associates, and most criminal and terrorist organizations punish informers with death. Informers therefore have to be protected, either by being segragated in prison or - if they are not incarcerated - relocated and given a new identity.

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Gangsters and other criminal types frequently employ slang words. As one would expect, the slang terms for "informant" are very derogatory, including rat, snitch and squealer. http://www.answers.com/informant&r=67 In the United Kingdom, grass is a common word for an informant.

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Defense lawyers make deals with courts and authorities to get the criminal out of jail as an informant. The police expect informants to sell drugs and commit other crimes, so that the informant can blend into the criminal environment without suspician. Police have been criticized for allowing the criminals to repeat their crimes. In some cases, the crime organization or gang knows a criminal among them is an informant, so they don't say anything incriminating to him. Sometimes they will give him false information so that the police will be misled. If the informant is a good friend or brother to the heads of a crime family, the informant will often side with the criminals and give police bland information of little use.

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CIA: REDIRECT Central Intelligence Agency...

Drug lords: redirectDrug lord...

Organized crime: Organized crime is crime carried out systematically by formal criminal organizations. The Organized Crime Control Act (U.S., 1970) defines organized crime as "The unlawful activities of ... a highly organized, disciplined association..."....

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