“The famous problems with the use of criminal informants are that they lead to wrongful convictions because they lie to get a good deal or to avoid arrests themselves," she said. “They continue to commit crimes themselves, because they obtain a kind of impunity as a result of collaborating with the government, so they escape liability and accountability for their own crimes and then the whole process generates a secretive culture in which rule-breaking, cutting corners, and sometimes corruption is more likely to occur, because everyone knows that it’s very unlikely that anyone will find out what the deal was.”