Ethical Approaches for Police Officers when Working with Informants in the Development of Criminal Intelligence in the United Kingdom

Bibliographic Data

ID2116576
AuthorsPaul Cooper (0000-0003-3730-2953, Merseytravel), Jon Murphy (0000-0003-3818-2260)
Year1997
Volume26
Issue1
Pages1-20
Publication date1997-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Social Policy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-2794 • E-ISSN: 1469-7823
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047279496004886
OpenAlexW2161617278
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Police use of informants is fraught with ethical difficulties, but police services in the United Kingdom, driven by the need to develop quality criminal intelligence, are increasing their reliance on informants as part of a proactive approach to policing. Improved systems of accountability and management are being developed for this area of police work, but there is also a need to develop a framework for ethical practice which may deal constructively with the important and complex ethical issues that informant handling regularly presents. This article reviews the primary issues in this area and considers three philosophical approaches, act and rule utilitarianism and Dworkin's philosophy of rights, in order to assess their value as the basis for an ethical model of informant handling

Accountability · Business · Engineering ethics · Epistemology · Ethical values · Order (exchange) · Political science · Public relations · Quality (philosophy) · Social science · Sociology · Utilitarianism · Value (mathematics) · Work (physics) · Computer Science · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Deception detection and forensic psychology · Engineering · Law · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Psychology

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