Informant
From Freepedia
An Informant is someone who provides information to law enforcement agencies.
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.
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.
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.
Gangsters and other criminal types frequently employ slang words. As one would expect, the slang terms for "informant" are pergorative, including rat, snitch and squealer. [1] In the United Kingdom, grass is a common word for an informant. "Squeak" used as a verb is also often used to refer to informing.
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 informats may provide disinformation so that the police will be misled. Also, for various reasons informants may not always may give information that value to the ongoing investigation.
Famous Informants
In linguistics the speakers of the local vernacular who are used for acquiring information on the grammar and structure of that language or dialect are called informants.
