Podcast offers glimpse into rarely seen world of police informants

A gripping new podcast from The Boston Globe’s investigative Spotlight team delves into the illicit netherworld of police informants.

Their perilous work, according to Snitch City host Dugan Arnett, constitutes “the backbone of nearly every drug investigation in America.”

Operating in the shadows, and maintaining a criminal façade in order to deeply infiltrate and surveil organized crime groups, informants ostensibly work with an eye toward helping to secure convictions, the Financial Times wrote.

But the network operates with a lack of transparency and supervision, Arnett said: “The stakes can be life and death and no one wants you to know how it really works.”