Ethical and Legal Issues in Undercover Investigations



Ethical and Legal Issues in Undercover Investigations

Introduction

Undercover policing unavoidably involves the use of deception and as a result of this deception the activities that follow may appear to be criminal in nature to anyone. In several of the undercover operations police introduced money laundering assignments for the drug cartel in Latin America, introducing drugs into the prison, printed forged bills, lying under oath and created businesses that paid cash for referrals or stolen goods.

In each of the crimes listed above the undercover agents or police was involved in illegal activities but they did it to keep their fictions identities or to gather evidence on which they would arrest the main culprits. Nevertheless for the cops that are permitted these illegal activities are not in any case considered as crimes since they are authorized to carry out these activities. Therefore as far as undercover investigations are concerned these activities are sometimes necessary and justifiable.

The practice of authorized criminality is unaccountable, secret and as such is in direct conflict with some of the basic principles of democratic policing. Let us start with the definition of authorized criminality. It can be described as the permitting of undercover police officers to employ in such behavior which is criminal outside the perspective of investigation. This feature can be distinguished from other undercover tactics such as adopting the role of a victim instead of a criminal by undercover cops or deceptive surveillance.

The term authorized criminality is widely used in the undercover operations but this subject has been exposed to little guidance or regulation. This topic involves some of the most basic questions on the very role of police in a democratic society and so the absence of a significant regulation is even more noteworthy (Wachtel, 1992, pp. 138- 139).

Discussion

This section contains the advice for the two detectives. In case of the detectives where they have to infiltrate a society, they will be coming under the authorized criminality phrase. The requirement for authorized criminality most often arises in the facilitative operations and infiltrating the society is one such example. For this the police will be needed to encourage crime that is the undercover Detective Underwood and Freeman would need to pose as if they are drug users or thieves themselves. The reverse of it is also effective the two detectives may even pose as drug sellers. The thing to be very much careful of here is the fact that the society will off and on try to flush out the suspected undercover cops from their ranks and will thus put them through test to see the willingness of the new joiners to commit crime. Therefore the two detectives will be required to play their fictitious part as convincingly as possible because passive behavior will only lead to exclusion of undercover cops from the society's ranks. So the detectives can commit minor crimes like shoplifting or smoking cannabis if it allows them to infiltrate to ...