ABSTRACT
The paper begins by showing that pro-active policing methods, and in particular the use of paid informers, has become a de facto national policy for policing in the United Kingdom. It reviews some of the literature on this type of policing and suggests that a significant absence in the discussion about police use of informants has been the degree and nature of conflict consequent from such police methods. Drawing on data from an ESRC funded project, the paper then goes on to describe and delineate different forms of conflict that may emerge in the context of informant based policing and argues that such conflict operates at the heart of the symbolic imagery of the police organisation.
