By Alexandra Natapoff

This summer, the Florida Senate unanimously passed groundbreaking legislation imposing new regulations on how police make deals with criminal informants. The bill - the first of its kind to be passed by a state legislature - could significantly improve the widespread, secretive practice in which police and criminal suspects (colloquially referred to as "snitches") trade information in exchange for lenience.

The legislature was galvanized by the death of Rachel Morningstar Hoffman. The 23-year-old graduate of Florida State University was upbeat and attractive, with supportive parents and a promising future - hardly a stereotypical snitch. But last spring, Rachel faced potential felony charges for possessing a small amount of marijuana and a few non-prescription pills. Terrified of going to prison, she made a deal with police to avoid prosecution. Tallahassee police sent her on a sting operation to buy a large amount of drugs and a handgun. During that operation she was killed.

Florida's new law is named for Rachel, and it creates new, basic mechanisms to protect informants and to increase police accountability. For example, Rachel's Law requires law enforcement agencies to establish policies and procedures, including recordkeeping rules, to guide police when they turn a suspect into an informant - essential regulations that most United States police departments lack. The law also requires police to tell suspects that police cannot make promises about what charges will be filed or dropped in exchange for cooperation - only a prosecutor can do that.

Police must also consider an informant's suitability - including their age, maturity, and risk of physical harm - before entering into an agreement. This last requirement is a nod to the fact that many experts concluded that Rachel Hoffman was unsuited to the dangerous task that police assigned her.

Rachel's Law is far from perfect. In particular, it was originally drafted to give suspects the opportunity to consult with a lawyer before agreeing to cooperate, something Rachel Hoffman didn't do and which most informants never do either. The final version eliminates this important safeguard. The law also leaves open what sort of information the police must collect and keep about their informants. In this regard, Rachael's Law lags behind the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, which have extensive recordkeeping requirements for keeping track of informants, their deals, and their crimes.

Rachel's Law illustrates just how secretive and unregulated law enforcement informant practices are. In any other legal context, it would be uncontroversial to require the government to have written procedures to guide and keep track of its important decisions. Likewise, it is a widely accepted practice to provide counsel to criminal suspects before they make life-altering legal decisions. Indeed, the United States prides itself on the professionalism of its police, and our Constitution is world-famous for its guarantee of counsel for those who cannot afford it. It is only because the world of snitching is largely devoid of these bedrock protections that Rachel's Law is needed at all.

While Rachel's death was covered by the network television news programs Dateline and 20/20, snitching has historically slipped beneath the public radar.

Every year, thousands of drug suspects secretly become informants, and they do it without lawyers, judicial oversight, or documentation. Vulnerable people routinely negotiate their fates directly with police on street corners or in local jails - including people with substance abuse or mental health problems, the young, and the illiterate. When these vulnerable individuals are threatened or harmed, it goes unremarked.

Not only is snitching perilous for suspects, it can be terrible for communities. In many high-crime urban neighborhoods, turning suspects into snitches has become a routine part of law enforcement and a potential threat to law-abiding residents. Although Rachel Hoffman was a nonviolent offender, criminal informants are often dangerous people or active drug dealers. When they cut cooperation deals in order to stay on the street, not only do their crimes go unpunished but they often continue offending. This means that local residents must live cheek-by-jowl with active offenders looking for information (or making information up) in order to work off their own criminal liability. Over just the past few years, several high profile stories have revealed how innocent people can suffer from police reliance on snitches. In Atlanta, Georgia, police killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston because of a bad tip from a drug dealer. In Hearne, Texas, dozens of innocent people were wrongfully prosecuted based on the fabrications of a criminal informant.

The clandestine quality of snitching deals makes our entire legal process more secretive and less accountable, keeping courts, legislators, and the public in the dark about the real working of the criminal system. Deals are struck, criminals forgiven, people hurt, and rules broken, all off the record and without mechanisms for accountability. In high crime neighborhoods, this can have serious consequences for police-community relations. When people see cooperating drug dealers remain at large, or learn about crimes that go unpunished, it undermines public faith in law enforcement. Rachel's Law will help this problem by creating formal police procedures to govern what is now a largely unregulated marriage of convenience between law enforcement and its criminal sources.

Several other states have begun to grapple with the challenge of informant regulation. Illinois has imposed special restrictions on the use of jailhouse snitches in capital cases. Texas has a new corroboration requirement for drug informants. The California legislature twice passed a bill that would require corroboration for jailhouse informants - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it both times. These laws address the risk that informants will lie when they testify as witnesses at trial.

Florida's Rachel's Law is unique in its effort to regularize the process from the very beginning, when police create an informant in the first place.

As happens all too often in our criminal system, it takes a tragedy to open our eyes. Rachel Hoffman's untimely death led to important reform that will improve the justice system in Florida. Let's hope other states follow Florida's lead.

Alexandra Natapoff is a professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, and author of the new book, “Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice” (New York University Press, 2009). Her blog — Snitching Blog — can be found at www.snitching.org.