Since 1971, the U.S. Witness Security Program (colloquially known as Witsec or the Witness Protection Program) has relocated individuals whose cooperation with the Department of Justice puts them in mortal danger. Established by the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 and amended by the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, the Witness Security Program emerged to protect witnesses and their authorized family members prior to and following testimony. This article discusses U.S. witness protection programs and their challenges as well as their international influence on popular culture.
Twenty-four-hour protection is provided to witnesses in a high-threat environment (such as pretrial conferences, trial testimony, and other court appearances). Other security measures are extended to mitigate life-threatening situations on an ongoing basis. Cases typically involve racketeering, drug trafficking, murder, and other serious crimes. At present, there are no data indicating whether or not the Witness Security Program has been utilized for terrorism-related crimes; however, it can pertain in such cases.
The program’s premise is that the associates of accused or convicted perpetrators are capable of finding any witness anywhere. By providing new identity credentials, however, individuals can be relocated within the United States and hide in plain sight without bodyguards. As of 2015, the U.S. Marshals Service continued to report the same figures cited since the early 20th century: Over 8,500 witnesses and 9,900 of their family members had entered the program, with three or four new cases entering the system each week. As of 2018, no more recent data have been released. The Witness Security Program presents a novel sociological model with specific challenges for identity formation and presentation. As such, it has important—though little studied—implications for psychological study.
The Witness Security Program involves two types of witnesses: cooperating defendants in protected custody awaiting trial or serving sentences in prisons-within-prisons (in 2000, the Bureau of Prisons reported 475 protected witnesses within its facilities) and nonincarcerated innocent victim witnesses living among the general population undetected in undisclosed locations. The Federal Bureau of Investigation prepares both kinds of witnesses to testify in criminal trials, provides them with new identity documents, and then hands them off to federal marshals who keep them as safe as possible from retribution. Some participants are relocated only until they give testimony, after which time they resume their former lives and identities. Some retain their original identities until trial and then emerge with new identities after testifying. Others have the new identities concurrent with trial preparation and retain them indefinitely. It is likely that the first category is the most common.
Challenges of the Pretense
Initially, other than providing essential identity documents, the program provided no assistance in preparing witnesses or their participating family members to construct new personae. The program has evolved so that when individuals prepare to enter Witness Protection, the Federal Bureau of Investigation initiates a process they call acting class, wherein participants construct and rehearse their basic backstory while living in an interim location. The new birth certificate; social security card; driver’s license; and a selection of school records, diplomas, professional degrees, or licenses; military discharge papers; marriage or divorce papers; and credit references that the Federal Bureau of Investigation supplies are scaffolding for this story and the new identity it will sustain.
This differs from identity theft in that the new identity is completely sanctioned and newly generated. This differs from a legal name change, in which the connection between the old and new names is officially linked. Nothing—not bank accounts, credit ratings, addresses, or other means to verify identity—should be connected to the protected witness’s new constructed identity. This protocol also differs from a death, which brings one identity to legal closure. Instead, the initial identity simply ceases to generate a trail while the new identity is fabricated so that it presents a credible history that can be built upon indefinitely, as long as the new identity is maintained. The implications for digital identity circulation are not addressed in the published literature, and further particulars are not disclosed by the Department of Justice. It stands to reason, however, that social networking or anything that could link identities through web searching or trawling, such as photographs or biometric registration, would be counter-indicated.
The premise of the Witness Security Program is that no person could wholly succeed in suppressing the recognition of the old identity if they were to encounter someone from their original milieu. Upon entering the program, witnesses’ former familial, social, and business connections must be severed, but in exchange, their civil liberties are largely intact. In cases where a parent enters the program but their juvenile dependents do not, visits have been arranged by the marshals. These situations are handled as much as possible like intercity transfers to court; however, there is the potential for the child to be followed and then the parent discovered. It is safest if witnesses commence new lives based on their state-authorized and state-manufactured identities, completely unlinked from their former associates. This is the strongest guarantee that they will be untraceable by anyone who would endanger them. Being accepted by their new neighbors in no way presents a comparable challenge to being unlinked from their old associates. Witness Security puts the onus on the relocated individuals to maintain the pretense in their new locale, but this is almost always manageable. The marshals report that when witnesses obey guidelines, the program never fails. If a chance encounter with an old associate or another protected witness occurs, the marshals will start the identity reassignment and relocation process over again.
Popular culture’s fascination with the Witness Protection apparatus, which has no other direct sociological parallels and is a genuine invention of late 20th-century culture, stems from the challenges of how to manage consistent identity presentation. Witness Security Program participants select a standardized lifestyle (e.g., soccer mom, salesman, or business person) and conform to its identity norms. A protected witness in the general population must trust that their identity scaffold, backstory, and ensuing behaviors will suffice to create persuasive performances. No official attempts are made to alter witnesses’ recognizability, either physically or vocally. One witness reported that as long as he kept a low profile, it sufficed for him to utilize a hat or sunglasses in order to feel safe. For the vast majority of participants, the scale of maintaining the pretense is manageable. Whether witnesses are innocent bystanders pulled into the vortex of giving testimony or career criminals accustomed to lying, they generally find that they are able to handle the transformation and presentational processes that their new roles entail. Common sense adjustments or substitutions to realign subcultural affiliations, whether ethnic, leisure, or vocational, evolve. This form of cultural relocation resembles the concept of passing in that as something unnoticed the individual subverts reality through a bluff that makes the witness’s original cultural locale and matrix imperceptible.
The ongoing pressures of understaffing strain the marshals, and the consequences for protected witnesses can be acute. Marshals’ responsibility is for witnesses’ safety, not for social or psychological welfare. A protected witness who testified in a 1978 case and then reentered the program a second time in the 1990s commented that nothing else short of incarceration could be so difficult. The sociologist Fred Montanino found that the higher their level of education, the more difficulty participants had in adjusting to the Witness Protection Program. Witnesses who relocate with another adult generally report less distress over an identity change than solitary relocators. Thus, maintaining a spousal or other familial or close personal relationship makes adjustment easier. Nevertheless, some nonwitness participants in the program report that their role is extremely challenging. Not having been involved in criminal activity could exacerbate this because they are unaccustomed to lying or consciously shielding aspects of their lives from others.
International Influence
The U.S. Witness Protection Program has been enormously influential abroad. Comparable programs were established in 24 other countries by 1989. Austria, the Bahamas, Bosnia, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Israel, Italy, Kosovo, Mexico, Panama, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Thailand, and Turkey are among the nations that have subsequently implemented programs on the U.S. model. The scope of witness protection continues to expand. The International Court at The Hague has utilized witness protection measures in prosecutions originating from the former Yugoslavia. In addition to other capital crimes, Canada extends witness protection to survivors of domestic abuse. The United Kingdom operates on a different model. In 1892, the British parliament passed a bill protecting witnesses to Royal Commissions or committees of parliament (though not courts of justice). Britain continues to operate with an informal system of protection for witnesses to capital crimes.
Popular Culture
Prominent protected witnesses featured in news sources and biographies include Nicky Barnes (a drug dealer) and Frank Salemme, Salvatore Polisi, and Henry Hill (all mobsters). Popular film treatments are numerous. The first was the 1980 Hide in Plain Sight, directed by James Caan. For many, Martin Scorsese’s 1990 Goodfellas endures as the most memorable. Since then, other films and television series have explored the theme in serious and comic modes. These include Witness Protection (1999, directed by Richard Pearce), Witless Protection (2008, directed by Charles Robert Carner), Fire With Fire (2012, directed by David Barrett), Madea’s Witness Protection (2012, directed by Tyler Perry), and The Family (2013, directed by Luc Benson). Television series include Showtime’s Meadowlands in 2007 (initially released as Cape Wrath), USA Network’s In Plain Sight (from 2008 through 2012), Adult Swim’s Delocated (from 2009 through 2013), and NRK1 Norway and Netflix’s Lilyhammer (from 2012 through 2014). Lilyhammer focuses on the highly unlikely scenario of a mobster relocated to a small Norwegian city, where his instincts for problemsolving are patently at odds with others in his new community.
References:
- Davis, T. C. (2015). The witness security program: Becoming imperceptible in the relocation matrix. TDR: The Drama Review, 59, 74–91. doi:10.1162/DRAM_a_00450
- Koedam, W. S. (1993). Clinical considerations in treating participants in the federal witness protection program. The American Journal of Family Therapy, 21, 361–368. doi:10.1080/01926189308251006
- Montanino, F. (1984). Protecting the federal witness: Burying past life and biography. American Behavioral Scientist, 27, 501–528. doi:10.1177/000276484027004006
- [U.S.] Committee on the Judiciary. (1985). Witness Protection Act. Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice. Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives. 98th Congress, 22 June 1983. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.