Paid police informants are a necessary evil

Police paying a convicted child rapist to be a covert informant will always turn stomachs. But the real stomach-churner is that the grooming and exploitation of vulnerable women and girls is continuing. Even so, the £10,000 payment made to a sex offender who helped bring the Newcastle grooming gang to justice has sparked a backlash. The chief constable of Northumbria, who authorised the payment, has conceded that his decision is widely seen as ‘morally repugnant’. Yet the criticism aimed at the police should not mask the importance of paid informants.

It’s clear to me that information and intelligence is the lifeblood of any investigation. This is particularly true in cases involving child sexual exploitation, where offenders operate in closed, tight networks. Until now, the predominantly Pakistani grooming gangs that have been exposed across the country – from Rotherham and Rochdale, to Telford and Oxford – and now Newcastle and Gateshead, represent just such a sort of group. They exist in a sociocultural environment distant from our own, where ‘white girls’ are viewed as worthless trash.