Informant Motivation

The FIREPLACES framework is summarized in the table below. 

·  F — Financial: Includes the receipt of monetary reward or in-kind payment (i.e. payment of rent, tools, vehicles, phones, clothes).

·  I —  Ideology / Moral: Information is provided about a person or group who possess ideas or beliefs at odds with those held by the informant (i.e. drug dealing or terrorist tactics). 

·  R — Revenge: Information is provided to harm or place another in a detrimental position (i.e. arrested) in response to a previous injury or perceived wrongdoing (i.e. as a result of an acrimonious breakup of a personal or criminal relationship). 

·  E — Excitement: Undertaking the role of an informant offers the individual a feeling of excitement, eagerness, or arousal.

·  P — Protection: Passing information to authorities to protect the informant from persons or networks threatening them, their criminal enterprises, or family. The cooperation aims to provide information that encourages police action to diminish this threat. 

·  L — Lifestyle: The role played by the informant provides the individual with an enhanced lifestyle, either as a consequence of deployments and/or payments. 

·  A — Access: The informant relationship provides an opportunity for counter-penetration to identify agency interest in offending networks and associates. This may include deliberate infiltration by criminals to understand the nature of police tasking and levels of interest in their or their competitor’s criminal enterprises. 

·  C — Coercion: Information is provided to avoid carrying out a threat made by an official (i.e. the threat of deportation; being prevented access to or from a country; or blackmail after being caught in compromising situations).

·  E — Ego: Undertaking the role of an informant enhances the individual’s self-esteem or self-importance. Where this ego starts to impact the veracity of provided information, these are sometimes colloquially known as ‘Walter-Mitty’ informants. 

·   S — Sentence: Information is shared to mitigate the length of a likely forthcoming prison sentence or release from detention. 

How Can FIREPLACES Help Handlers?
RIPA 2000 requires both regular reviews, and where appropriate, renewals of the informant’s authority. This necessitates an examination of an informant’s tasking activity, their general behavior and demeanor, and the interrogation of open and closed datasets. All of these are explored to identify new and emerging risks and operational opportunities.

The legislative process provides a juncture in which to review the original assessment of motivations. 

Understanding a potential informant’s motivation(s) can lay the foundation for managing the risks and opportunities associated with the informant-handler relationship and their subsequent operational deployments. 

The FIREPLACES framework not only increases the probability of identifying motives but can also enhance control, efficacy, and longevity of authorized relationships; potentially increasing ethical intelligence elicitation.

Disseminating the framework can be achieved by utilizing existing knowledge platforms that provide an opportunity to offer a more detailed explanation within UK government doctrine, academic articles, and continuous professional development.