InformantsInformant Motivation
The effective recruitment and deployment of informants is critical to law enforcement and intelligence agencies being able to identify and manage threats. Accurately identifying a source’s motivation for providing information enables an informant handler to better influence the informant’s behavior. A new framework has been devised to help informant handlers better identify motivations.
The effective recruitment and deployment of informants is critical to law enforcement and intelligence agencies being able to identify and manage threats.
Accurately identifying a source’s motivation for providing information enables an informant handler to better influence the informant’s behavior.
This is central to an informant handler’s command of the authorized relationship.
Early frameworks for identifying motivation, including the mnemonic MICE (Money, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego) have directed informant handlers to explore motivations that may provide a better understanding of their informants.
However, motivation is more nuanced and multidimensional than the MICE framework proposes.
To address this, Ian Stanier and Jordan Nunan of CREST have developed a new mnemonic, FIREPLACES: Financial, Ideology, Revenge, Excitement, Protection, Lifestyle, Access, Coercion, Ego, and Sentence.
This alternative framework provides an enhanced understanding of the complexities of informant cooperation and can be used by informant handlers to identify a range of motivations. Informants report on threat groups and individuals of interest by providing a unique human intelligence insight.
Motivation and Human Behavior
In the UK, authorized informants are legally defined within the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) as those who have maintained or established a personal relationship for a covert purpose of providing access to, disclosing, or obtaining information. Securing the services of a person to inform requires an understanding of their motivation.
Motivation is a form of influence that can affect intentions and behaviors. Informant handlers may better understand an informant’s motivation(s) by exploring their morals, interests, choices, goals, and perceptions.
Interestingly, there are two key aspects of motivation and human behavior:
1. Nature and direction of motivation – concerned with the reasons and decisions to act
2. The magnitude of motivation – referring to the commitment to pursuing an act.
Learning the Mnemonic
The FIREPLACES framework acknowledges the greater diversity of motivations and the dynamic and interchangeable nature of informant motivations when compared with earlier models.
It reflects the multidimensional nature of co-operation while also acknowledging that an informant can, simultaneously, hold positive and negative reasons for motivation, depending on who and what is being collected.
The benefits of identifying both the nature and extent of an informant’s motivation include enhanced control over their activities and identifying and managing their vulnerabilities – ensuring safer future tasking deployments.
Identifying an informant’s motivation also helps ascertain the limits of their co-operation, the longevity of the relationship, and the potential for informant misconduct.
