Transcript Designing Randomized Trials of Informer Recruitment and

Designing Randomized Trials of Informer
Recruitment and Management Policies
Cody W. Telep
George Mason University (USA)
6 July 2011
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
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
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
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 badcurrent 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
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
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)
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
Informer Experiments: 3 examples
1. Recruiting informers in a prison/jail setting
2. Managing informers through interview/questioning
techniques
3. Recruiting and managing informers in crime hot spots
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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