Covert Surveillance And Informer Handling - Coursework Example

Covert Surveillance and Informer Handling Name: Professor: Course: Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 3 EVOLUTION OF SURVEILLANCE 4 DEVELOPMENT OF COVERT TACTICS 6 Drivers of Changes through the Development Path 8 Dynamism of Policing and the Performance Culture 8 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Risk Management 10 There is a Demand Gap 10 COVERT SURVEILLANCE 11 INFORMER MANAGEMENT 12 IMPACTS OF COVERT SURVEILLANCE AND UNDERCOVER POLICING 15 Advantages 15 Disadvantages 16 CONCLUSION 17 References 18 Covert Surveillance and Informer Handling INTRODUCTION This critical analysis details and explores the realm of covert intelligence that is ubiquitously featured in extant literature as a concept often deployed by the policing community to control and detect crimes. This overview gives a background of the evolution of covert surveillance that has greatly changed particularly as technology infiltrated not only social economic behaviors but also the political governance. Covert surveillance is discussed in this context to connote use of undercover methods and techniques to observe or/and record criminal activities by some targeted law violators as is provided for by the penal code of the state in question. According to Billingsley (2009), surveillance is a complex and often a complicated practice that is characterized by ambiguity in that it can yield positive results and negative effects as well. The concept revolves around tracking of people’s or an organization’s behavior, activities, and other aspects such as changing information purposively for intervention, management, or protective purposes. Covert surveillance is a component of the revered intelligence collection realm that has gradually evolved into a cornerstone of sustainable policing across the globe. The significance of analyzing this subject is to explore crucial features that enhance understanding of the contemporary intelligence-led policing, its genesis, and the theoretical and conceptual features that differentiate it from mere crime reduction. The question of how police should combat crime remains a great source of discussion and has increasingly blighted the contemporary research on law enforcement. According to Harfield and Harfield (2012), the rationale of intelligence is traceable to the nineteenth century practice by British commissioners that emphasized prevention of crimes as the primary role of a policeman. At the core of the commissioners policing culture was the reasoning that the law enforcement agents had to inhibit local offenders while at the same time reassuring potential victims (Petersen 2012). The British policing ideology required officers to establish contacts within the community that would feed them with information to enable them prevent crime, reassure the local people, and arrest criminals when a crime actually occurs. This analysis will critically lay a broad background of the evolution of surveillance and informers, and detail theoretical bases that chronicled the evolution of policing at different times and contexts. The paper will discuss the different types of informants and covert surveillance, and explain the changes that have occurred in the practices and their inherent influences on policing. EVOLUTION OF SURVEILLANCE Though the concept of surveillance as aforementioned is sophisticated and complex to delineate historically, apparent changes were notable from 1960s when the role of the police as an agent of crime prevention and reassurance of the victims began to diversify. In general, various aspects of policing evolved due to changes in the society and the transformation of ways in which criminals committed crimes (Fijnaut and Marx 1995). Moreover, the changes in policing were instigated by unprecedented public expectations and the adjustments by police in their response mechanisms. This transformation saw infiltration of the policing practices by other practices such as use of radio directed rapid response, criminal investigations, and crime prevention that dominated as the new model of law enforcement. There is an array of factors that cultivated surveillance and informer services in the policing doctrine. For instance, the attitude toward police by the public changes as did their view of the role of security agents. Billingsley, Nemitz and Bean (2013) note that unlike earlier when intelligence information would trickle immensely from the community to the police owing to the amble relationship, there developed a wave of incremental crimes and availability of greater information about the performance of the police. This precedence changed the role of police into that of managing risk, trying to make the public happy, and responding rapidly to crimes once they occurred. This trend cultivated surveillance as authorities focused more on crime fighting and criminal arrests re-invigorated the role of police. Surveillance systems and use of informants became the order of the policing practice and reactive and investigating concepts emerged as the new model of law enforcement (Fijnaut and Marx 1995). This strategy anchored on the assumption that increased surveillance backed detections would reduce the number of offenders and concurrently deter potential criminals at large, which would adjudicate the preventive role. However, this theoretical perspective: increased early detection would reduce crimes, and increased arrests would stem crime prevention was weak in a number of aspects. Primarily, the approach was watered down by the fact that increased detection in tandem with same scale arrests were not only far from reality but would also clog the jails thus forcing the criminal justice system to halt into a standstill. Additionally, if police were to increase detections and concurrent arrests, the system would be resource strapped and thus demanding more funding from public coffers. As presented by Billingsley, Nemitz and Bean (2013), the number of crimes soared greatly in the UK and the U.S. in the 1970s, which eroded any hope of the community-police relationship working for any good. The implication of the explosion in criminality that outstripped available resources, security agents started recognizing that traditional models: reactive and investigative were not satisfactory in crime fighting. The viable option was to establish a system that would increase the community-police contact thus increasing the flow of information that would improve intelligence and policing efficacy. While retaining the rhetoric of community policing, security agencies started exploring viable styles and techniques of crime management. Human intelligence in this context surfaced as a viable strategy that would stretch the movement of policing through collection and use of data for decision making as regards crime control. Problem-oriented policing has been the cornerstone of surveillance and intelligence gathering that underscores surveillance. DEVELOPMENT OF COVERT TACTICS The undercover policing realm though difficult to connect with its plausible origins, it seemingly a 16th century product of emerging nation-states particularly in Europe that deployed varied covert techniques to either guard their political, military, or social-economic interest. During this momentous wave, authorities across Europe established special bureaus for diplomatic correspondence in which informants would be recruited and spies deployed collect intelligence on the intensions of their enemies (Fijnaut and Marx 1995).Although much of this practice is enlisted as British, it is imperative that the first modern police apparatus was established in France toward the end of the seventeenth century. The central theme of the apparatus was to gather information on potentially dangerous groups of people, families, or even individuals mainly by covert means. Undercover policing is often associated with the policing strategies that sprouted as western economies started cementing greater democratic social and political systems. This premise is bolstered by the underlying assumption that covert surveillance was necessary for improving crime management strategies, although the characteristic invasion of privacy dogs the legitimacy of the practice. Covert policing tactics scrupulously undermine trust, exposes unpredicted dangers to third parties, and increases the risk of corruption within police and judicial systems. The covert surveillance concept is discussed in this context to connote the wide use of intelligence in policing and management of matters of national and international security concern. Although it has been intimated in this article that covert-led policing is increasingly surpassing the traditional crime prevention and management styles, the origins of the concept stretch over the last three decades and are a little indefinite (Bates and McHorney 2000). This chapter chronicles the fundamental changes and managerial shifts within the contemporary doctrine of law enforcement that has cultivated the dominance by intelligence oriented policing. Extant literature covering this subject contend that the crime prevention model of policing as the fertile ground that continually cultivate the data backed law enforcement. At the core of modern policing theories was the assumption that efficacy of police was a function of crime prevention, and detection and punishment followed as secondary features. However, the changing policing environment while maintaining the preventive aspect as the main focus recognized that the secondary perspectives: detection and punishment, as the pillars of crime fighting movement. According to Ratcliffe (2012), the British Metropolitan Police engaged some plain clothe police (covert men) in the early 1840s to investigate and recover stolen jewellery from a robbery case. Additionally, there was a gradual movement toward intelligence-led policing in that within thirty years (1870s) there was formal detective system that slowly encouraged the movement from crime prevention to detection. Therefore, in the development path for covert policing, detectives increasingly gained considerable influence within police force as they made more arrests compared with a copper in the street. Important to mention is that fact that while covert tactics may be complicated and counter productive in some instances, it data collection element improved the police’s knowledge of the local villains, and builds a seemingly autonomous clique within police system that bonds closely. This practice developed a reactive policing model in which police would act upon publicly sourced information, which remain even today as a popular practice of detection and punishment of crimes. Drivers of Changes through the Development Path It is ubiquitously put that policing is usually resistant to any change; however, the movement from the traditionally preventive policing models into detective and corrective concepts underpins the dynamism that defines the modern styles as regards continual adaptation to extrinsic and intrinsic pressures. Dynamism of Policing and the Performance Culture The complexity of the policing world and the incremental performance expectations by the public are important factors as regards the changes that characterize the intelligence world. In particular, the performance culture has forced greater changes in the systems. This is underpinned by the increased ability to use information harnessed through covert tactics, and which informs decision making and internal risk management. The apparent changes as covert policing take the centre stage include the increased demand by administrators for reliable internal transparency and accountability. The change in this context moved policing to knowledge dependence, which hedged information management techniques that ensure police never lose any crucial information even after its original use. Fijnaut and Marx (1995) view changes in policing that integrated surveillance for information gathering as crucial drivers of systemic improvements as they have instigated the need for internal audits and monitoring practices. Additionally, performance pressures driven by surveillance information have encouraged policing departure from paper into electronic recording in order to match with the ever changing information technology. Although the data-laden surveillance policing have been on the forefront in transforming global policing systems, it is inherently ironical that much of the data collected is not utilized by the spies for incrimination and punishment of criminals. Ratcliffe (2012) notes this disadvantage alluding that the information is diverted to concerned departments for action, which may not necessarily be appropriately utilized. Another change is that the public has become more aware of covert surveillance activities through which they believe the police collect a lot of criminal justice information, and which they expect to be exposed to them. The development of surveillance within police systems harbors the modern intelligence-led policing has created a great wave of change in that police executives recognize the continual need for a clear process or methodology for planning and prioritization in order to utilize the information more objectively. This precedence has further heightened the performance culture in the police services, which has forced the authorities to adapt to changing communication technology especially the digitization in order to achieve the analytical ability (Ratcliffe 2012). Summarily, the performance culture within police force has been driven greatly by information gathered through covert surveillance that enhance crime detection and enforce judicial punishment. This has definitely been instrumental in terms of improving efficiency because of the increased ability to make strategic decisions. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Risk Management Covert surveillance systems have been the driving forces of the increased accessibility to crime related information by police who are incrementally under scrutiny by the public today than never before. This cause has been reiterated by researchers as the driver of the need for risk management, a facet that has significantly changed the law enforcement realm in the contemporary world. The enhancement that has seen the improvements in criminal data collection methods has liberated the police more in that the chiefs can address media conferences with confidence, and attend security meetings with decisive speeches. There is a Demand Gap For much of the genesis of policing history, it is argued that the numbers of police officers would reliably pare with the crime rate. However, the change that swept the policing realm from 1960s saw an uncontrollable surge in the crime rates, a phenomenon increasingly associated with the lapse in the police-community relationship. It is thus plausible to argue that while surveillance has increased information availability for police to fight criminality, it has overstretched police capability as regards the number of crimes to be fought. COVERT SURVEILLANCE Covert surveillance is a more formal and technical intelligence collection in which detectives deploy clandestine techniques of gathering and synthesizing information about target groups, individuals or even organizations without being noticed (Fijinaut and Marx 1995). Compared with informer intelligence, surveillance bears both physical and electronic technology characters, and its ground is set by prior reconnaissance that may include surreptitious entry. Covert surveillance is a more complicated policing approach that is very crucial for intelligence –led policing especially in contexts where highly complex criminal activities are involved. As surveillance incrementally becomes the contemporary government’s tool of policing, there has emerged to broad categories. The mass surveillance (passive surveillance) is distinguishable by its undirected nature in that it does not target any particular individual for example the CCTVs and data bases. The targeted surveillance, which is of more importance in the context covert tactics seeks gathering of intelligence about a particular individual or a group of people and can use special powers by authorized government arms. Covert surveillance often involves human agents and it can be targeted if intended to gather intelligence for specified investigation or operation. Covert surveillance as intimated in this paper has been largely transformed by technological innovations, which has seen powerful electronic gadgets and underlying communications technologies become routine facilities. According to Prunkun (2010) , targeting methods in the contemporary high level intelligence collection may include eavesdropping, interception of communications, the use of specified communications traffic data, and implantation of moving vehicular equipment and visual surveillance devices. Surveillance collects more information that an informant may never be able to infiltrate from a criminal suspect, and has thus been subjected to serious legal scrutiny. The Regulation of investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Clarke 2007) provides a comprehensive guidance on the conditions and legal requirements that appertains to different types of surveillance and the eventual use of the intelligence. The law clarifies that the law enforcing officers should appropriately authorize surveillance or informer activities in order to enhance credibility of the material collected for the benefit of acceptance in the court process. INFORMER MANAGEMENT It is imperatively explicit that the increased availability of information underscores the policing progress witnessed in the contemporary systems. This ability is increasingly bolstered through covert surveillance, which has been very resourceful at information gathering that influences the success of policing through criminal investigation. According to Haggerty and Samatas (2010), covert tactics enhance the authorities to address difficult contexts especially when they lack witnesses in critical cases that they are unable to gather any credible information from the crime scene and in which sophisticated criminals are involved: during such scenarios, the tried and workable methods of contemporary law enforcement (informants and surveillance) plug the gaps effectively. Important to note is the fact the fact that though the use of informants is more legally accepted as regards the investigative law, it can as well be repugnant in ethical terms. Moreover, surveillance has increasingly occupied the center stage as the more legally accepted method because it is easy to constitutionally regulate and bears seemingly ethically sound methodologies. Worthwhile mentioning in this context is that informants are often used on the loose especially during the stages at which the investigators are developing crucial leads in a difficult case. The implication is that informant management is usually a sophisticated task because it is not enshrined in the law, and the process mostly involves compromising the law enforcement requirements. Although it has been established that intelligence-led policing is the system of choice in the contemporary social economic and political structures, some scholars argue that the surveillance and informant methods should only be invoked as the last resort and not routinely (Clarke 2007). The rationale is that these methods are not designed for screening-out but to feed the system with information for further analysis and synthesis for decision making. Informant management is an expensive process, controversial and may at times time-intensive. Core factors to consider include the fact that in addition to being dangerous and stressful, informant methodology can be risky both for the mainstream parties and third parties. Informant management is crucial and should be dynamically structured to ensure that intelligence is easy to form and apply reliably. Informants are usually double edged characters that bond across the two interested parties (investigators and the criminal underworld), and they often have to be cultivated to become reliable sources. According to Martson (2011), informants that are cultivated make the best sources in that they are able to disclose critical information about real turn of events among the criminals of concern. Care must be observed to avoid overreliance on apprehended criminals turned informants because before the law their value is worthless as they are presumed to pursue self interests at the expense of objective lead. The use of this type of informants can be detrimental and at times embarrassing to the authorities primarily because when their end has been satisfied they may gamble the information for money or other interest. These premises imply that informants must be active that are able to report to include the future facet of a crime. In the contemporary policing, active informants are often cultivated because they routinely comprise of individuals that are untrained on espionage or spying. According to Martson (2011), these cultivated parties comprise of business people (shopkeepers, taxi drivers, hotel employees or even Casino attendants among others, which are within the proximity of where the targeted criminal activities occur. The rationale is that the cultivated informants can establish unsuspicious relationships with the criminal suspects. These sources become the ears and eyes of the police in the street, and they are used to reflect signs of crime at early or formative stages. It is important to note that the use of cultivated informants does not amount to infiltration or undercover because apparently its substance almost characteristic of espionage. To manage such sources is necessary that the conduct officer keeps them from indulging into provocative activities that may characterize criminality. Additionally, the management must seek to maintain the relationship between the informants and their sources of knowledge about the underworld criminal world that must be monitored closely for corroboration. Initially during the primary phases of the evolution of intelligence-led policing, it was commonplace to find every police officer having their own informants. However, with the changing complexity in the policing realm and the nature of crimes and criminals, many police departments allow their officers only to cultivate informants, and there has not been a standard way of registering or handling them. In the U.S. for instance, federal security arms have a discipline of registering their leads to the agency as quasi employees; but municipal agencies tend to register informants in the name of a detective (Clarke 2007). The municipality practice holds a very temporary practice in this context in that they lose almost all informants once their link detective retires or leaves office. Informer handling is also bedeviled by the inherent secrecy maintained by the parties because of fear of exploitation of the trust. In stances where an informant has been put on payroll, their engagement becomes some how formal because they have to be officially registered: financial law demands accountability and transparency in public money use, which implies that they have to be regularized to justify their payments to the auditors. Informants with this status may be designated confidential informants, which levels them to other leads that have special knowledge about past or future crimes, which may predispose them to violent retaliations. Generally, informer handling is fundamentally a function of the link detective’s knowledge about what can motivate them, and continually ensuring that such incentive include money (Clarke 2007). IMPACTS OF COVERT SURVEILLANCE AND UNDERCOVER POLICING Advantages Although covert surveillance has in the recent years been criticized for intrusion into personal life, its primary benefit in validating information coming from an informant or an undercover agent for generation of intelligence cannot be overemphasized. For example, covert surveillance makes the law enforcement chiefs to independently verify the credibility of an informant data and its authenticity. Although some time visual devices may not be able to give vocal evidence of a meeting and discussion between an informant and target source, the ability of the covert techniques of validating the physical meeting at the stated place and time can go a long way in enhancing the worthiness of the informant word especially if the pattern becomes recurrent (Fijinaut and Marx 1995). Seeing is believing and that extends to the world of policing and intelligence in that high tech optical devices deployed during covert surveillance aid operatives not only to verify informant reports beyond reasonable doubts for use in courts. Additionally, it has emerged that the changing nature of crimes and criminals has complicated the policing realm, and the practice has been increasingly dangerous and marred with a lot of secrecy. Covert surveillance allows use of high technology devices that help operatives to collect information for intelligence from afar, further away from their targets thus minimizing the possibility of losing data of losing track if the context requires repeat scenarios. Surveillance has innumerous advantages though in the highly democratized societies it has become a subject of litigations owing to the intrusive character that infringes people’s rights to privacy. Disadvantages The impacts of covert surveillance primarily revolve around the intrusion and infringement of the right to privacy. For instance, CCCTV surveillance can intrude an individual’s privacy and deprive people of their anonymity in public space through covert observation (Clarke 2007). For instance, when people roam public places such as streets or parks, they are entitled to the right of freely seeing and being aware of the people or visual equipment that are watching them. This is a human right that when infringed by covert surveillance, makes people become hypersensitive to others, and can force individuals feeling as being trailed change their behavior in the presence of others. Generally, covert surveillance (hidden observation) impacts negatively on an individual’s person in various ways. Secret observation is injurious to an individual in that his/her normal life adjusts when they are taken unawares because they may imagine they are free from the hidden eye when they are actually in its full glare. Additionally, when people are aware of their subjection to covert surveillance, they may be constantly constrained to venture public areas. Although the law enforcers may argue that potential criminals must be made feel constrained about committing any offenses in public places, secretive observations extent extend beyond the suspect offenders’ bracket to intrude any other person within the devise’s gaze. CONCLUSION This critical review reported about the realm of covert surveillance and informer management. The surveillance and informant discourses are traceable to from early seventeenth century when many western societies started experiencing democratic transformations. The basis of covert surveillance is anchored on the early development of democracies in the developed countries, which saw emerging nation-states desire to secretly know the intentions of their rivals. The doctrines evolved further through conceptual changes as policing authorities sought better crime management models. Covert surveillance has emerged as the best intelligence methodology because of the inherent ability collect data in dynamic and sophisticated environments, and the capacity to validate informant information. The main disadvantage of covert surveillance is the misuse aspect that is criticized for intrusion into personal right to privacy. Covert surveillance and undercover or informant discourses have transformed the policing realm in that authorities are presented with different approaches of crime detection, prevention and adequate support for punishments. Informant management requires the operative’s ability to understand their motivations and maintaining their closeness to their knowledge sources. References Bates, B and McHorney, C 2000, Developing a theoretical model of counter proliferation for 21st century, Edwin Mellen Press, London, UK. Billingsley, R 2009, Covert human intelligence sources: The “unlovely” face of police work, Waterside Press, London, UK. Billingsley, R, Nemitz, T and Bean, P 2013, Informers: policing, policy, practice, Routledge, New York, NY. Clarke, D 2007, ‘Covert surveillance and informant handling’ in T. Newburn, T. Williamson, and A. Wright (eds) Handbook of criminal investigation. Cullompton, Devon: Willan. 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