NEWSWORKS TONIGHT

Philadelphia officials rolled out a new crime fighting plan one week ago.  A key element is offering bigger rewards.  Experts are skeptical that larger rewards will get more criminals off the street.

When announcing the policy, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams was optimistic that money would bring in new tips.

"People need to know if you give us information that leads to the conviction in a homicide you will get $20,000," said Williams.  "If you give us information that helps us get an illegal gun off the street you will get $500.  We all know times are tough.  This is the worst recession since the Great Depression.  So if you can help us, you will be rewarded."

Not every expert's sold on the plan.

Lawrence Sherman, a professor of criminology at Cambridge University and a former University of Pennsylvania professor, said there might be a more logical way to put that money to work.

"To use computers, to use statistical forecasting," said Sherman.  "Rather than to rely on the sort of payback, revenge motives of dropping dimes on people, which is what you get when you ask the general public to provide information and pay them for it."

Sherman said offering reward money for crime tips usually nabs just one criminal.  

The city said it's using the new, systematic approach to cash rewards as an incentive, to build cases and as a way to convince sometime reluctant citizens to give up information about a crime.  

Alexandra Natapoff a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and wrote the book "Snitching: criminal informants and the erosion of criminal justice."  She said the government can't address crime without cooperation from the people that it polices, and community members are supposed  to give information to the police when they see crimes.

"We have to ask what effect the promise of financial gain -- what effect that might have on the information that the government is getting," said Natapoff.  "When we inject money and rewards into any dynamic like that, we just have to be very careful."

Natapoff said while rewarding citizens can be a very effective way to get more information from the public, it's also sending a message.

"The government has moved to a market model: they're paying for information instead of the relationship between the government and the citizen, of partner in joint effort to make our community safer and better, in effect we have a free market or capitalist model if the government's buying information and rewarding folks for getting information," said Natapoff. "That's a troubling model."

While many citizens who offer information do so anonymously, Philadelphia says it's committed to helping those who could be in danger.

Mayor Michael Nutter said the city will double funding available for protecting witnesses from $200,000 to $400,000, so if people come forward they won't be intimidated into silence.