Dive Brief:
- The University of Massachusetts Amherst is reviewing a student drug informant program after one of the confidential informants died of a heroin overdose.
- The university’s announcement comes one day after the Boston Globe published a story revealing that the student informant died in October 2013.
- The university said Monday that it will consider whether student informants in the campus police program should be required to be treated for possible addictions and whether their parents should be informed when they are recruited to the program, the Globe reported.
Dive Insight:
In spite of the negative publicity, the university is defending the program. In a statement, the school framed the questions about mandatory referrals to addiction specialists and parent notifications from the perspective of whether the program can operate successfully with those two factors. The student who died was recruited after he was caught selling LSD. Police told him he wouldn’t be charged or disciplined by the university, and his parents wouldn’t be informed if he agreed to become an informant. He agreed, and he was dead within a year.