Covert Human Information Sources - Coursework Example

Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………….. 2 Cooperation with Community…………………………………………………….. 3 Improved Practices………………………………………………………………… 4 Problems of Policy Design…………………………………………………………. 5 Effectiveness of CHIS……………………………………………………………… 8 Police Still Value CHIS……………………………………………………. 8 Practical Cases……………………………………………………………… 9 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………. 11 Use of covert Human Information Sources in Investigations Introduction A covert human intelligence source (CHIS) is otherwise known as an agent. This basically refers to a human source of intelligence that has the capability of providing secret reporting on any particular investigation topic (Shulsky & Schmitt 2002). The public gives the police information through different ways. Charl (2009, p. 56) makes a distinction between informers and informants. He argues that the informer is that person with a specific motivation to avail specific information to the police. Such a person has a close association with criminals and he trusts the police to keep secret his relationship with them. On other hand he says that an informer is a member of the community with important information to the police. Sources therefore are those people who covertly and consciously give the police particular information in return for a reward or no reward but they rely on the promise of the police not to reveal their identity. Covert human intelligence sources (CHIS) have been used for years by many countries to collect information on different issues. Researchers have conflicting views on the effectiveness of this mode of intelligence gathering. Some see it as a very effective method while others maintain that agents are not the best sources of intelligence. This paper is about the use of covert human information sources in investigations. The essay will argue that covert human information sources are effective in gathering information for purposes of investigations. The paper follows a structure whereby the essay firstly explores the topic and introduces it to the reader. The next level is to discuss the challenges of a non effective CHIS practice followed by a critical evaluation of these challenges and the remedies. It will then take a particular position whereby it will agree that covert human information sources are effective as sources of intelligence in investigations. Finally, it will examine the reasons to support this position. Cooperation with Community Police have the responsibility of fighting crime and making sure that the community is safe. Contemporary policing requires that police organizations should develop wide knowledge about the criminal environment and to have the right priorities in the deployment of resources. Today, the need of the police to work hand in hand with the community is more critical than ever before. According to (Dishman 1997, p.12) police informants are very important to the police and they should be even more utilized to lower crime rates. This position was supported by the findings of the 1993 UK Audit Commission report dubbed “Helping with Inquiries, Tackling Crime Effectively.” However, Dishman emphasizes on the usefulness of police informants but he fails to show how best these informants can be made use of for better results. In an environment where people fault the use of informants it is necessary for him to explain how best police can work with these information sources to reduce crime. According to (Harfield & Harfield (2012, p. 33) Covert Human Information Sources are effective sources of information and they can work well if they are developed professionally. The professional practices developed by the police should be made a part of policing philosophy led by intelligence. The intelligence management has made encouraging advances in the past especially in the area of collecting and analysing technical data. However, there are concerns that human intelligence sources are still low in the accuracy and quality of their information. For example, the commission of Inquiry into the September 11 attacks on the United States heaped blame on the United States Central Intelligence Agency after the 9/11 bombings because it lacked the capability to obtain information from covert human information sources. Murphy (2005. p. 78) argues that from the beginning of this millennium, it was obvious that the police needed to create better ways of working with community members to lower crime rates and victimization and to secure the safety of the community. The effectiveness of Covert Human Information Sources depends on the ability of the police to create networks within communities especially in those communities that are at risk. What Murphy fails to capture in his argument is that police need the backing of other security agencies and intelligence organizations working closely with the community to be able to make any progress. He captures the role of the police alone, yet the police alone have in the past failed to create the mentioned networks. Networks are however important for reduction of crime rates. Community safety and its delicate nature have in the past been laid bare by incidents of domestic security in the past 8 years. Such incidents include the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, the September 11 attacks and the Bali bombings. It is true that using Covert Human Information Sources has in the past been a major technique for controlling crime. This has been so in those places where there is organized crime in the last 30 years especially in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australasia. However, Shulsky &Schmitt (2002, p. 115) argue that police organizations are yet to do enough in ensuring that the practice extends to other areas of policing. Improved Practices Even though there are many people heavily criticising the relationship between the police and the informer, many police forces and organizations involved in enforcing the law have abandoned the traditional relationship between the police and the informer and instead they have adopted a more comprehensive, ethical and professional way of source recruitment and management. Different police jurisdictions in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Australia have introduced dedicated Covert Human Information Sources units as well as other units for handling sources. These units have made a significant contribution in developing professionalism in the practise of gathering intelligence over a wide area of criminal activity which includes domestic security. Specialized human source management units have several advantages. They afford the police a high level of managing sources professionally and relatively good oversight in the broader relationship between human sources and the police. Human source management units are audited formally and independently with a lot of accountability systems. This ensures that they have quality standards and at the same time they significantly reduce many of the risks that come with management of human sources. The effectiveness of covert human information source use can be improved if proper policy design is instituted to manage corruption in the police, poor management of intelligence and ethical source management. The potential positive results such as reduction of crime and safety in communities through the use of sources in ethical well structured and professional intelligence models are more than the risks associated with using human information sources. Problems in Policy Design According to (Kádár 2001, p. 104) policy controlling the police – human source relationship should work harder to establish ethical procedures to help increase the effect that information obtained from human sources can have on the fight against crime. However, the relationship involves many risks which become challenges in policy design. Police is faced with the challenge of ensuring that the traditionally and reactive use of informers for investigation is transformed into a professional and proactive focus in which the management of sources is focused at enriching the knowledge of the police about crime in the community so that it can be reduced. The evolution of this transformation process has taken place over the years as unethical practices of handling human sources by the police have been uncovered. Kadar however fails to show how best police can incorporate ethics and professionalism into their practice. He shows the way forward but falls short of giving the details to the achievement of an ethical and professional police force (Goldsmith, Lewis 2000, p. 200). In the course of the “Wood Royal Commission of Inquiry into the New South Wales Police,” Justice Wood discovered that there was corruption and unethical relationships between the New South Wales Police and the covert human information sources they were working with. In the year 2004, the Kennedy Royal Commission tasked with carrying out investigations in the police of Western Australia revealed that there was a lot of work that had been done in human source management but major protocol breaches were evident and the engagement of police with sources lacked sufficient operational focus (Prunckun 2012, p. 43). As a result of their findings, the two commissions agreed with Kadar on the need for a structured and well supervised system in the police to govern human source management at every organizational level. This system should have a management structure that is tiered. Mollen, reported in Williamson (2008, p. 210) listed the same requirements in a commission of inquiry investigating corruption allegations in the New York Police Force. The Morris Tribunal held in Ireland also stressed that same requirement. Researchers have revealed that police officers overlook certain crimes committed by the sources they work with. They also show that some sources and police officers use manipulation and selective information provision by the officers in touch with the informants. It is unfortunate that for a long time police organizations had not made an effort to streamline their relationship with sources or have a more effective governance of the information gathering process from sources. In the last 12 years though, police organizations especially those in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom promulgated policy as well as processes to help re-design and re-evaluate the unethical working relationship between the human sources and the police. Shulsky & Schmitt (2002 p. 130) argue that the policy governing the police-source relationship must give direction on the mode of protection and management of these assets in a manner that is transparent and auditable. The policy should also come clear on the type of interaction between those managing the sources and the sources themselves. The policy that governs human source management in policing must endeavor to change this relationship from its reactive nature that only seeks to have passive information reception by investigators to an approach that is more proactive and which incorporates a professional human source management framework into the intelligence doctrine of the organization and connected to the strategic framework within which the organization functions. This kind of framework should aim at increasing the knowledge base about crime so that the local communities can have safety as police reduce victimization and crime. Just like Kadar, Shulsky & Schmitt fail to dig into the details of how what they propose can be done. Their argument carries weight but fails to direct the reader to the much desired outcome. He fails to show what he means by a professional framework for human source management. According to Harfield (2009, p. 10) this paradigm shift needs the policing organization to develop different patterns of thought. Human source management modernization requires that the process be linked to a strategy driven by intelligence in the organization. There are enough incentives to the police organizations to create human source management practices as a central element of the intelligence framework of the organization. Effectiveness of CHIS Even though in this paper, so many weaknesses of the Covert human information source use have been exposed, this practice is still effective and very useful in investigations. So far, this technique is still in use despite the criticism directed at it by researchers from all over the world. According to ( Doak, & McGourlay 2012, p. 115) the police need to put more effort in making the practice more professional and ethical and the results will be marvellous. He argues that poor use of the practice and handling of information sources has resulted into the many disadvantages being listed by authors as problems of the practice. Police still value CHIS At the moment, there is no found better and cost effective method of gathering intelligence apart from the use of human sources. Billingsley (2009, p. 23) argues that the use of covert human information sources (CHIS) who are paid or unpaid is an important tool that bodies concerned with law enforcement use to gather intelligence and CHIS are at the top of the list in value among other information sources for intelligence gathering. They enable the police as well as other security agencies to get evidence for purposes of prosecution. According to Ward, Kiernan & Mabrey (2006, p. 230 ) any disclosure with the potential to reduce the ability of the police and intelligence organizations to obtain information can have a huge prejudicial effect on the ability of these organizations to gather accurate and reliable information and would cause them to start relying on time consuming and expensive methods of intelligence gathering. Practical cases There are many cases where covert human information sources have been used by police to avert planned acts of terrorism and other criminal activities. For decades now, police have been relying and they still rely on this practise to gather information about crime. CHIS have many advantages over other known methods of gathering intelligence. According to Great Britain, Home Office (2010, p. 13) some commissions and even observers have noted that the September 11 attacks and the failure of intelligence at the time of the WMD’s of Iraq was to a bigger percentage the absence of human intelligence. In America, the Clinton Administration drastically cut down the budget for human intelligence. Funds were transferred to other forms of information gathering such as signals and imagery intelligence. As was seen in the case of the WMDs in Iraq it is not possible to gather adequate intelligence without involving human sources. Human sources are more effective because they can reveal what other forms of intelligence gathering such as satellites may not be able to see. (Richielson (2008, p. 67) notes that human sources are more cost effective than other intelligence forms. For example, the cost of one satellite and the cost of moving the satellite in orbit to get information about a particular area are expensive and the quality of information obtained does not match the costs incurred. Unfortunately, in analyzing the cost effectiveness of CHIS, Richielson forgets to see that CHIS have been infective because of underinvestment in them. High quality information and reliability from human sources can be obtained if more funds are pumped into the practice. He also fails to talk about the corruption and manipulation that reduces the effectiveness of CHIS. Human information sources are effective today than ever. Scott & Jackson (2004, p. 119 ) states that intelligence gathering from human sources has helped prevent terrorist attacks targeted at United States embassies and international targets. A lot of this information has been obtained from informants. Since the September 11 incident, other attacks have been prevented in the US, Indonesia, Canada, England and other countries. This has been attributed to the reforms done in gathering intelligence from human sources. Intelligence agencies at the international level have also implemented the suggestions of the September 11 commission about human intelligence and the sharing of information. Scott & Jakson are right on this but they negate the role played by other intelligence assets such as satellites in intelligence gathering because human information sources always need to be supplemented. It is important to note that if the intelligence organizations did not make the gathering of information from human sources more effective since the 9/11, history would have repeated itself. Since September 11 2001, many attacks were unsuccessful because of good intelligence gathering especially from CHIS. The commission emphasized the importance of human intelligence. Other states and nations have also emphasized the use of human intelligence and human sources recognizing the need of obtaining intelligence from human sources. The effectiveness of human intelligence has been improved and the results are evident in the reduced terrorist activities within the US (Doak, McGourlay 2012, 56). One thing that reduced the effectiveness of human intelligence including the use of covert human information sources in the United States before the 9/11 was the competition for funding between agencies and budget cutbacks. This was later replaced with increased funds and dedicated liaison personnel charged with the responsibility of coordinating the sharing of information between human intelligence units all over the world. The use of intelligence assets to supplement human intelligence all over the world stresses the importance of human information sources in intelligence gathering. The teachings of Sun Tsu emphasized the importance of human information sources and human intelligence. He said that knowledge about the strategies of the enemy is available only from other people (Sun Tsu 2004, p. 10). Conclusion In conclusion, this paper has discussed the use of covert human intelligence sources (CHIS) in investigations. From the discussion, it is clear that CHIS is the oldest method of intelligence gathering. However, because of improper use people have come to think that it is no longer effective. One of the things that have been reducing the effectiveness of this practice is the low or no cooperation with the community from the police. The police must work with the community in order to have wide knowledge about criminal activities. Professional and ethical treatment of human sources has not been there in the past. Today, the police are adopting ethics, professionalism and integrity. Police forces and organizations involved in enforcing the law have abandoned the traditional relationship between the police and the informer and instead, they have adopted a more comprehensive, ethical and professional way of source recruitment and management. Proper policy design is being implemented to tackle corruption and other irregularities. Policy design has various challenges but it is encouraging to see that many countries around the world are working at it. Police still have confidence in covert human information sources because even with the coming of technology such as satellites they haven’t abandoned the use of human information sources. The world has witnessed a drop in terrorist cases since 9/11. This is because of the changes made in intelligence agencies at the international level to prioritize human information sources. It therefore remains that covert human information sources are still effective in the provision of intelligence. 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