Snitch Programs

ATLANTA – For a growing number of students, the easiest way to make a couple of hundred dollars has nothing to do with chores or after-school jobs, and everything to do with informing on classmates.

Tragedies like last month’s deadly shooting at a Red Lake, Minn., school have prompted more schools to offer cash and other prizes — including pizza and premium parking spots — to students who report classmates who carry guns, drugs or alcohol, commit vandalism or otherwise break school rules.

“For kids of that age, it’s hard for them to tell on their peers. This gives them an opportunity to step up if they know something that will help us make an arrest,” said James Kinchen, an assistant school superintendent in Houston County, Ga., which earlier this month started offering rewards of up to $100 for reporting relatively minor crimes like vandalism or theft and $500 for information about a crime, or plans for a crime, involving a gun.

Critics call them “snitch” programs, saying they are a knee-jerk reaction to student violence. Some education professionals fear such policies could create a climate of distrust in schools and turn students against each other.

“There are very few things that I can think of that would be more effective at destroying that sense of community,” said Bruce Marlowe, an education psychology professor at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.

About 2,000 schools and colleges, from Honolulu to Palm Beach County, Fla., have adopted Student Crime Stoppers programs like Houston County, according to the nonprofit [Crime Stoppers U.S.A., http://www.c-s-i.org ] which began helping schools set up such programs in 1983.

At Model High, some of the 650 students complain that the program wrongly implies their school is dangerous. In a Rome News-Tribune cartoon, the school’s official mascot was mockingly changed from the Blue Devils to the “Tattlers.”

No one has received a reward yet at Model High.

“Everyone just thinks it’s a joke. No one is going to tell on their friends for cash,” said senior Katie Burnes, president of the school’s National Honor Society chapter. “If someone brings a gun to school or is doing drugs in the bathroom, no one has to pay me to let the teachers know.”

Frank Farley, an educational psychology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, said students should be taught to speak up without being offered a reward.

“This idea of surveillance — there’s something unsavory there,” Farley said. “We’re familiar with the history of that in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.” He added: “I think it’s bad civics.”

Crime Stoppers International Foundation

Why contribute or care about a Crime Stoppers International Foundation?

The world of crime and terrorism has changed… it is now transnational without borders or boundaries. What happens in one part of our world affects us here at home. The same is true when combating crime and terrorism. We continue to fight it at home, but we MUST help others to combat it before it reaches our home cities. The security web must be widened.

For example: a major North American city took down a nine member al-

Qaeda cell from a Crime Stopper tip. What could have happened to your area if they had been allowed to continue their planning for death and destruction?

18 million dollars worth of drugs bound for Boston were seized in Bermuda from a Crime Stopper tip. What impact would those drugs have had if they had reached California?

3 Columbine-type massacres were averted through Crime Stopper tips.

What if these attacks had been carried out in your schools?

To make our home cities safer, Crime Stoppers International is expanding its influence and impact to avert these crimes BEFORE they hit home. The key to this fight will be HUMAN INTELLIGENCE and Crime Stoppers is the source of that intelligence.