Tips on Lawbreakers Should Be Encouraged

* I applaud your editorial (“Just Call It a Reward for the Student Hero,” March 5) supporting the proposal to reward students who report that a peer has a gun. You say “any reference to these students as snitches, stool pigeons, rats or informants merely feeds into the problem we are all trying to solve, which is to get more students to come forward.” I don’t know what is objectionable about the term “informant,” but the other labels are obvious put-downs of the sort used by convicts who view themselves as noble “stand-up” guys, who would never do such a thing. However, convicts are the opposition in the battle for law and order. Providing information on lawbreakers, which they abhor, we should encourage, and, where appropriate, reward.

Jailhouse “informant,” which I consider at least neutral in tone, appears in titles of Times articles on March 4, July 10 and 11, 1990, and May 8, 1991, and others. But a “snitch” is used in at least five articles from February, 1990, through February, 1995. In the past two years I also find “stool pigeon” and “tattler.” The message given is that informing on lawbreakers is bad. When providing information about another is not viewed as a virtue, we can surely find better terms, terms that do not suggest that providing information about others is automatically contemptible.

A code of silence exists not only in prisons, but in the police and military, among doctors, lawyers, professors and more. We may find it a bit much to try to get our kids to buck a tradition that we have so firmly established.

RICHARD O’CONNELL

North Hills