11 ms·

What are the forces at play here? People don't want to be embarrassed by their mugshot vs people don't want to be discriminated against because of a mugshot vs

by dfxm12 5y ago

What are the forces at play here? People don't want to be embarrassed by their mugshot vs people don't want to be discriminated against because of a mugshot vs the transparency of who cops are arresting and why. I don't know if laws should care about someone being embarrassed. I'm kind of surprised about this anti-transparency rhetoric coming someone who started a Libertarian think tank (but maybe I shouldn't be). I can sympathize with those who think having their arrest record publicized will lead to discrimination, but I don't think hiding mugshots will have much of an effect on that. Plus, if that's an issue we want to solve, then make laws that actually target discrimination because of arrest record & laws that otherwise protect the rights of those accused of crimes. I think most importantly, arrests need to be publicly available. We have a right to know who the cops are arresting and why, lest people start disappearing or jailed for mysterious reasons (or for looking a certain way). In general, I think our government isn't nearly transparent enough...

throwawayboise 5y ago
> I think most importantly, arrests need to be publicly available. We have a right to know who the cops are arresting and why That's a good point, but on the other side there is the (very important) presumption of innocence. If I'm arrested, but not convicted of any crime (or possibly not even charged), why should that be a public record that will haunt me forever?
- dfxm12 5y ago
  The question is why/how is it haunting you? See my 2nd point. If our culture treats the accused poorly, that's not the fault of nor is it caused by public mugshots.
  - itake 5y ago
    How do you correct the problem of our culture treating the accused poorly? If you're arrested under false pretenses (just google search "cops planting drugs" to see countless videos), how do we prevent life-long impact of innocent people?
    - dfxm12 5y ago
      I suppose one step we can take is to not put so much blind faith in cops. They get arrests wrong. I do think politicians, cops and the media all have a role to play though.
      - itake 5y ago
        "we can take is to not put so much blind faith in cops." Unfortunately, we can't just tell everyone "stop trusting arrest reports" because that just isn't how the world works. The problem is companies will compare 2 equal candidates, but one with an arrest record. The one without the arrest will get the job. Do you have any other ideas?
        dfxm12 5y ago
        There are already laws that protect certain classes of individuals in situations like housing and employment. It's not hard to apply these laws to other classes.
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        Except… how do you enforce this? Afaik that's also a problem with the existing laws.
  - TchoBeer 5y ago
    It _is_ enabled by public mugshots though. You can ban public mugshots, but you can't ban "the culture treating the accused poorly".
    - dfxm12 5y ago
      but you can't ban "the culture treating the accused poorly" You can ban treating them illegally though. There's a difference between embarrassment and discrimination.
    - 1_person 5y ago
      I think you actually have that backwards. You can't ban public mugshots and have a free and open society. If arrests can be secret then there is no executive or judicial oversight. But you can make charged and convicted statuses a protected class, and ban its consideration in any context as has been done for other protected classes. After all, if we believe that the process of justice rectifies wrongs, then the matter should be closed when the process has been completed. If we do not believe that the process of justice functionally rehabilitates and fairly rectifies, such that consideration of history beyond the closure of a matter is necessary, then what exactly is the aim of that process? We could also educate the public about the purpose of the justice system, moral complexity in the assignment of responsibility in the light of historical/social/environmental/economic factors, psychology of criminality and rehabilitation, and the frequency of successful rehabilitation and subsequent significant contribution. Pixels aren't the problem, the behavior of dehumanization is the problem.
      - BitwiseFool 5y ago
        The way I see it, you can either pass a law "banning the pixels" or try to change human nature. Which will be easier and which one will address the issue sooner?
        1_person 5y ago
        Either way you're ignoring human nature. The other human nature is the nature of power to corrupt, ignored in reducing the transparency of the judicial and executive processes. I can't think of a single historical or contemporary example of government secrecy which has produced morally consistent outcomes. I do not think such things can exist without eventually corrupting the process they serve. As I said below in another thread, banning discrimination on the basis of judicial and criminal history would immediately and obviously "change human nature" because the practice of discrimination on the basis of these histories occurs openly as a best practice under standing precedent in almost every area of society. It's literally on application forms -- how can you NOT think that requiring "the question" to be absent from the form would change the conversation about this kind of discrimination?
  - SkyBelow 5y ago
    >If our culture treats the accused poorly, that's not the fault of nor is it caused by public mugshots. Not sure how that works. Another person taking action between a cause and effect does not remove the cause from being responsible for the effect. For example, if I file a false police report and someone is arrested, I can't claim it isn't my fault because the police should've done a better job checking the report before arresting. The police were part of the cause, but so was my false report.
- antihipocrat 5y ago
  Can someone more clearly explain to me how the transparency laws actually improve transparency in practice? Why would a police department, who would act in a way malicious enough to disappear people, suddenly start adhering to the requirement of publishing a mugshot of a person they want to disappear?
  - dodobirdlord 5y ago
    “Disappear” doesn’t necessarily mean “murder and hide the body”. It can also cover harassing people and completely disrupting their lives by throwing them in jail for a while for no particularly good reason and then not telling anyone until you release them (possibly having beaten or raped them in the meanwhile, and extracted promises of future regime-approved behavior). Requiring that the police make public who they have arrested and why ensures that person’s family and friends, and especially importantly, their lawyer, can find out where they have vanished to and why, and bring it to the attention of a judge and the public immediately if the arrest was nefarious. This way if the police want to use disappearance as a harassment tactic, they have to escalate all the way to “murder and hide the body”, or they will eventually have to face justice when they finally release the person and reveal that they had been holding them the entire time in secret.
    - antihipocrat 5y ago
      Thanks for that, I understand the argument a little more. If reducing undue harassment and disruption is the reason for publishing mugshots, and it turns out that in practice the mugshots are actually being used by others to harass and disrupt (potentially innocent) people's lives, then maybe it's worth reviewing the practice? Where I'm from most minor criminal convictions on a persons the record are essentially wiped clean after 10 years (technically 'spent', and won't appear in normal police checks). It is illegal for people to obtain information about a spent conviction and use that information unless it is related to sexual abuse or violent crime. Another thing, what happens to the people who don't have a lawyer or whose friends and family don't have the resources to take on the police department in the event that the police detain and abuse them? Who would they be able to call in that situation to seek justice if the same police who committed the crime are receiving the call?
admax88q 5y ago
> Plus, if that's an issue we want to solve, then make laws that actually target discrimination because of arrest record. Do you honestly think such laws would be effective?
- dfxm12 5y ago
  I don't have such a defeatist attitude. I think it would contribute overall to lessening the stigma of being accused of a crime. Politicians, cops and the media all have a part to play in this, though.
- 1_person 5y ago
  Considering that the status quo is currently that literally asking the individual and querying the source of truth to confirm the history of an individual directly for the purpose of discrimination are ubiquitous practices... yes, I think such laws would be very effective in reducing discrimination on the basis of criminal and judicial history. If we have not even said that it is wrong, then it's going to happen. Saying that it is wrong and should stop happening is the first incremental step in reducing its rate of occurrence.
  - jawzz 5y ago
    These laws exist. You’re not allowed to discriminate based on criminal or arrest record unless it’s relevant to the job (e.g. someone applying to be a delivery driver with 3 DUIs). The problem is that between two equally qualified candidates, if one has a record and the other is clean, it can be pretty easy to justify just throwing the first one out. And pretty hard to prove that that’s why you were rejected.
- nradov 5y ago
  "Ban the box" laws have proven effective in reducing employment discrimination in several states. These laws prohibit employers from asking job applicants for most types of jobs about prior arrests or convictions.
scythe 5y ago
A mug shot does not provide publicly relevant information. It is very much the opposite: a direct invasion of an individual's privacy. I didn't consent to that picture being next to my name. Frankly, it's crazy that any mug shot is ever available on the Internet, unless it's on some kind of "wanted" list.
novok 5y ago
Mugshots are a form of punishment without being convicted of a crime. The government and police keep plenty of info private before court days, so it can make sense to keep this private too. I think the main reason why they are public is so the police cant just disappear someone when they were arrested for potentially political reasons, and their political supporters can start responding when it happens, same with why court cases are publicly accessible.
- pintxo 5y ago
  I don't understand the mechanics of this, making arrests public prevents secret detention? Do we expect a police force who would like to illegally arrest people would care about adhering to the administrative process of publishing such arrests?
- dfxm12 5y ago
  Yeah, I'll grant it's worth considering not making them public until a court date. There are people arguing many different things, including barring the release of the photos to the public totally.
tomatotomato37 5y ago
That is an interesting point. One of the the reasons for the Florida Man meme is due to the state's sunshine laws, which makes nearly all government records and proceedings, those dealing with arrest, public. That leads to a lot of embarrassing stories about rednecks molesting alligators, but it also allowed for the uncovering of a massive Minority Report-tier scheme of police officers continually harassing citizens marked by an algorithm as a "potential future criminal" https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/police-pasco-sheriff-targeted/intelligence-led-policing/ https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p...
agogdog 5y ago
You are vastly underestimating how judgemental people are. I know someone with a mugshot up for a non-violent drug use offense and she still struggles with it when background checks come up over a decade later. I agree that we need to be able to check this stuff to hold police accountable, but there's got to be a better way that doesn't involve public shaming.
HighPlainsDrftr 5y ago
I agree. The US Government was founded on the idea of transparency, the people, are the ultimate power. Nothing in the government should be secret forever. I realize we have national security. We shouldn't allow them to hide information from us forever. We need newer guidlines on this. Eg - after the government does something, maybe it should be brought out into the open after a certain period of time - a year - months - whatever - but it is something that we should demand.
herbst 5y ago
How comes the rest of the modern world does not have these issues you mention of people disappearing then we do not openly blame all of them with mugshots? Home comes the country with by far the most police brutality in the modern world thinks their system is working? I honestly do not understand what mugshots have to do with anything at all. All I see is invading of these people's privacy if they want or not.

by dfxm12 5y ago

throwawayboise 5y ago

> I think most importantly, arrests need to be publicly available. We have a right to know who the cops are arresting and why That's a good point, but on the other side there is the (very important) presumption of innocence. If I'm arrested, but not convicted of any crime (or possibly not even charged), why should that be a public record that will haunt me forever?

dfxm12 5y ago
The question is why/how is it haunting you? See my 2nd point. If our culture treats the accused poorly, that's not the fault of nor is it caused by public mugshots.
- itake 5y ago
  How do you correct the problem of our culture treating the accused poorly? If you're arrested under false pretenses (just google search "cops planting drugs" to see countless videos), how do we prevent life-long impact of innocent people?
  - dfxm12 5y ago
    I suppose one step we can take is to not put so much blind faith in cops. They get arrests wrong. I do think politicians, cops and the media all have a role to play though.
    - itake 5y ago
      "we can take is to not put so much blind faith in cops." Unfortunately, we can't just tell everyone "stop trusting arrest reports" because that just isn't how the world works. The problem is companies will compare 2 equal candidates, but one with an arrest record. The one without the arrest will get the job. Do you have any other ideas?
      - dfxm12 5y ago
        There are already laws that protect certain classes of individuals in situations like housing and employment. It's not hard to apply these laws to other classes.
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        Except… how do you enforce this? Afaik that's also a problem with the existing laws.
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  It _is_ enabled by public mugshots though. You can ban public mugshots, but you can't ban "the culture treating the accused poorly".
  - dfxm12 5y ago
    but you can't ban "the culture treating the accused poorly" You can ban treating them illegally though. There's a difference between embarrassment and discrimination.
  - 1_person 5y ago
    I think you actually have that backwards. You can't ban public mugshots and have a free and open society. If arrests can be secret then there is no executive or judicial oversight. But you can make charged and convicted statuses a protected class, and ban its consideration in any context as has been done for other protected classes. After all, if we believe that the process of justice rectifies wrongs, then the matter should be closed when the process has been completed. If we do not believe that the process of justice functionally rehabilitates and fairly rectifies, such that consideration of history beyond the closure of a matter is necessary, then what exactly is the aim of that process? We could also educate the public about the purpose of the justice system, moral complexity in the assignment of responsibility in the light of historical/social/environmental/economic factors, psychology of criminality and rehabilitation, and the frequency of successful rehabilitation and subsequent significant contribution. Pixels aren't the problem, the behavior of dehumanization is the problem.
    - BitwiseFool 5y ago
      The way I see it, you can either pass a law "banning the pixels" or try to change human nature. Which will be easier and which one will address the issue sooner?
      - 1_person 5y ago
        Either way you're ignoring human nature. The other human nature is the nature of power to corrupt, ignored in reducing the transparency of the judicial and executive processes. I can't think of a single historical or contemporary example of government secrecy which has produced morally consistent outcomes. I do not think such things can exist without eventually corrupting the process they serve. As I said below in another thread, banning discrimination on the basis of judicial and criminal history would immediately and obviously "change human nature" because the practice of discrimination on the basis of these histories occurs openly as a best practice under standing precedent in almost every area of society. It's literally on application forms -- how can you NOT think that requiring "the question" to be absent from the form would change the conversation about this kind of discrimination?
- SkyBelow 5y ago
  >If our culture treats the accused poorly, that's not the fault of nor is it caused by public mugshots. Not sure how that works. Another person taking action between a cause and effect does not remove the cause from being responsible for the effect. For example, if I file a false police report and someone is arrested, I can't claim it isn't my fault because the police should've done a better job checking the report before arresting. The police were part of the cause, but so was my false report.
antihipocrat 5y ago
Can someone more clearly explain to me how the transparency laws actually improve transparency in practice? Why would a police department, who would act in a way malicious enough to disappear people, suddenly start adhering to the requirement of publishing a mugshot of a person they want to disappear?
- dodobirdlord 5y ago
  “Disappear” doesn’t necessarily mean “murder and hide the body”. It can also cover harassing people and completely disrupting their lives by throwing them in jail for a while for no particularly good reason and then not telling anyone until you release them (possibly having beaten or raped them in the meanwhile, and extracted promises of future regime-approved behavior). Requiring that the police make public who they have arrested and why ensures that person’s family and friends, and especially importantly, their lawyer, can find out where they have vanished to and why, and bring it to the attention of a judge and the public immediately if the arrest was nefarious. This way if the police want to use disappearance as a harassment tactic, they have to escalate all the way to “murder and hide the body”, or they will eventually have to face justice when they finally release the person and reveal that they had been holding them the entire time in secret.
  - antihipocrat 5y ago
    Thanks for that, I understand the argument a little more. If reducing undue harassment and disruption is the reason for publishing mugshots, and it turns out that in practice the mugshots are actually being used by others to harass and disrupt (potentially innocent) people's lives, then maybe it's worth reviewing the practice? Where I'm from most minor criminal convictions on a persons the record are essentially wiped clean after 10 years (technically 'spent', and won't appear in normal police checks). It is illegal for people to obtain information about a spent conviction and use that information unless it is related to sexual abuse or violent crime. Another thing, what happens to the people who don't have a lawyer or whose friends and family don't have the resources to take on the police department in the event that the police detain and abuse them? Who would they be able to call in that situation to seek justice if the same police who committed the crime are receiving the call?

admax88q 5y ago

> Plus, if that's an issue we want to solve, then make laws that actually target discrimination because of arrest record. Do you honestly think such laws would be effective?

dfxm12 5y ago
I don't have such a defeatist attitude. I think it would contribute overall to lessening the stigma of being accused of a crime. Politicians, cops and the media all have a part to play in this, though.
1_person 5y ago
Considering that the status quo is currently that literally asking the individual and querying the source of truth to confirm the history of an individual directly for the purpose of discrimination are ubiquitous practices... yes, I think such laws would be very effective in reducing discrimination on the basis of criminal and judicial history. If we have not even said that it is wrong, then it's going to happen. Saying that it is wrong and should stop happening is the first incremental step in reducing its rate of occurrence.
- jawzz 5y ago
  These laws exist. You’re not allowed to discriminate based on criminal or arrest record unless it’s relevant to the job (e.g. someone applying to be a delivery driver with 3 DUIs). The problem is that between two equally qualified candidates, if one has a record and the other is clean, it can be pretty easy to justify just throwing the first one out. And pretty hard to prove that that’s why you were rejected.
nradov 5y ago
"Ban the box" laws have proven effective in reducing employment discrimination in several states. These laws prohibit employers from asking job applicants for most types of jobs about prior arrests or convictions.

scythe 5y ago

A mug shot does not provide publicly relevant information. It is very much the opposite: a direct invasion of an individual's privacy. I didn't consent to that picture being next to my name. Frankly, it's crazy that any mug shot is ever available on the Internet, unless it's on some kind of "wanted" list.

novok 5y ago

Mugshots are a form of punishment without being convicted of a crime. The government and police keep plenty of info private before court days, so it can make sense to keep this private too. I think the main reason why they are public is so the police cant just disappear someone when they were arrested for potentially political reasons, and their political supporters can start responding when it happens, same with why court cases are publicly accessible.

pintxo 5y ago
I don't understand the mechanics of this, making arrests public prevents secret detention? Do we expect a police force who would like to illegally arrest people would care about adhering to the administrative process of publishing such arrests?
dfxm12 5y ago
Yeah, I'll grant it's worth considering not making them public until a court date. There are people arguing many different things, including barring the release of the photos to the public totally.

tomatotomato37 5y ago

That is an interesting point. One of the the reasons for the Florida Man meme is due to the state's sunshine laws, which makes nearly all government records and proceedings, those dealing with arrest, public. That leads to a lot of embarrassing stories about rednecks molesting alligators, but it also allowed for the uncovering of a massive Minority Report-tier scheme of police officers continually harassing citizens marked by an algorithm as a "potential future criminal" https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/police-pasco-sheriff-targeted/intelligence-led-policing/ https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p...

agogdog 5y ago

You are vastly underestimating how judgemental people are. I know someone with a mugshot up for a non-violent drug use offense and she still struggles with it when background checks come up over a decade later. I agree that we need to be able to check this stuff to hold police accountable, but there's got to be a better way that doesn't involve public shaming.

HighPlainsDrftr 5y ago

I agree. The US Government was founded on the idea of transparency, the people, are the ultimate power. Nothing in the government should be secret forever. I realize we have national security. We shouldn't allow them to hide information from us forever. We need newer guidlines on this. Eg - after the government does something, maybe it should be brought out into the open after a certain period of time - a year - months - whatever - but it is something that we should demand.

herbst 5y ago

How comes the rest of the modern world does not have these issues you mention of people disappearing then we do not openly blame all of them with mugshots? Home comes the country with by far the most police brutality in the modern world thinks their system is working? I honestly do not understand what mugshots have to do with anything at all. All I see is invading of these people's privacy if they want or not.