[Snitch programs] are a knee-jerk reaction to student violence. Some education professionals fear such policies could create a climate of distrust in schools and turn students against each other.

"There are very few things that I can think of that would be more effective at destroying that sense of community," said Bruce Marlowe, an education psychology professor at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.

Of the 2,000 schools that participate Student Crimestoppers programs, one of those that pay is Model High School in Rome, Georgia. Many students look at the program as a joke:

At Model High, some of the 650 students complain that the program wrongly implies their school is dangerous. In a Rome News-Tribune cartoon, the school's official mascot was mockingly changed from the Blue Devils to the "Tattlers."

"Everyone just thinks it's a joke. No one is going to tell on their friends for cash," said senior Katie Burnes, president of the school's National Honor Society chapter. "If someone brings a gun to school or is doing drugs in the bathroom, no one has to pay me to let the teachers know."

As one college professor in educational psychology puts it,

"This idea of surveillance - there's something unsavory there," Farley said. "We're familiar with the history of that in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany." He added: "I think it's bad civics."

Update: Injustice Anywhere, a new blog by a Texas public defender, has some thoughts on the program.