Cops and Snitches: Two New Blogs

by Matt Kelley · 2009-08-19 04:29:00 UTC
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Two new blogs have joined the criminal justice reform conversation online, both are worth a look (and adding to your feed reader).

The first is Alexandra Natapoff's new Snitching Blog. Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School in L.A., is one of the country's leading experts on the role of snitches and informants in the criminal justice system and I've linked to her research and commentary in this space plenty of times in the past. She posted yesterday on the effects of sanctioned crimes committed by informants while they are working for the government. She wrote:

When law enforcement tolerates crimes committed by cooperating offenders, whether it is drug use, property crimes, or violence, the neighborhoods in which those offenders live have to put up with it.

Visit her new blog - aptly named the 'Snitching Blog' here.

The other new blog worth a visit was launched by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, the group of current and former police, prosecutors and corrections officers speaking out for the legalization and regulation of drugs. LEAP's blog pointed this week to a Washington Post op-ed by two former Balitmore police officers calling for drug legalization.

Visit the LEAP blog here.

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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