Police use of informants is fraught with ethical difficulties, but police services in the United Kingdom, driven by the need to develop quality criminal intelligence, are increasing their reliance on informants as part of a proactive approach to policing. Improved systems of accountability and management are being developed for this area of police work, but there is also a need to develop a framework for ethical practice which may deal constructively with the important and complex ethical issues that informant handling regularly presents. This article reviews the primary issues in this area and considers three philosophical approaches, act and rule utilitarianism and Dworkin's philosophy of rights, in order to assess their value as the basis for an ethical model of informant handling.
