Most of us have probably heard the term "jail house snitch" or "police informant." more than not that refers to someone in debt to the law who receives incentives for providing authorities with information...and a new study says they may not always be reliable. Co-author of the recent University of Arkansas study into jail house informants, Jessica Swanner tells us that, "Ideally it would bring forward accurate informants. Unfortunately what it brought forward were opportunistic people." In the study, Swanner found it wasn't the incentive itself that spawned false secondary confessions from snitches -- but the opportunity to avoid a bad situation. She sees it as a bit of a game for opportunistic criminals saying, "I like to think of the incentive as a 'get out of jail free' card or a proxy for one. So they have the opportunity and they take it." And current data suggests it can have deadly consequences -- in fact 46% of exonerated death rows inmates were put on death row by informant testimony -- testimony that -- in the end -- proved to be completely false. A common occurrence according to Jessica Swanner because jurors are so prone to believe testimony given by jailhouse informants. Swanner points out that the U of A study isn't enough to ask that testimonial bartering be done away with -- she just hopes authorities realize -- credible information often won't come from opportunists.