Stop Snitchin' - The Snitching Project

The Snitching Project

The Snitching Project, led by Rick Frei of the Community College of Philadelphia, is an ongoing student-driven interdisciplinary research initiative aimed at developing a better understanding of the "snitching" phenomenon and facilitating community discussion through education. The project is sponsored by the Fox Rothschild Center for Law and Society.

Begun as an educational project 2007, the Snitching Project relies on inner city students, who are on the front lines of the Stop Snitching culture, to collect data regarding attitudes towards snitching, as well as dispositional and situational variables that might influence a person's propensity to cooperate with police.

In January 2010, in response to scathing investigatory series on the Philadelphia court system in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Frei testified before U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs about the relationship between the Stop Snitching phenomenon and other forms of witness intimidation. Frei and his students have appeared as panelists on a number of local and national television and radio programs (TruTV), as well as academic conferences. In addition, the students also organize and co-sponsor their own conference on the topic, entitled "The Shh! Conference: The Stop Snitching Phenomenon, Witness Intimidation, and Silence About Crime". In its second year, the conference has been attended by nearly 1500 students and community members in Philadelphia Speakers included Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, nationally syndicated and controversial hip-hop DJ STAR, Pulitzer Prize-nominated mob author George Anastasia, head of security for the Comcast Center Jim Birch, and Philadelphia District Attorney Integrity Officer Curtis Douglas.

The Project also sponsors a student-created and -edited wiki and Facebook page, which includes copies of past surveys, results from the data collection effort, an extensive history of snitching, and links to relevant websites and articles on the topic of snitching.