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Anticipatory Undercover Targeting in High Schools

NCJ Number
152246
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 22 Issue: 5 Dated: (1994) Pages: 445-457
Author(s)
B A Jacobs
Date Published
1994
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This article examines undercover operations in high school settings, where young-looking officers pose as students to buy drugs from dealers.
Abstract
Previous studies on undercover operations have not given adequate attention to officer intensive targeting. Officer-intensive targeting is associated with anticipatory operations, where agents infiltrate a diffuse setting, pose as one of its members, identify offenders, and implicate them in illicit transactions. A four-part typology is offered that involves reputation building, intelligence gathering, semantic inducement, and visual and conversational serendipity. Discussion focuses on an expressive analytic framework of anticipatory undercover social control based on the notion of seduction. Data were drawn from semistructured interviews with 30 undercover officers located in a large United States city. Acknowledgements, notes, references