5 ms·

This specific case is not a great test bed for this, but it's absolutely a big problem that newspapers will publish the full name of someone who was arrested, e

This specific case is not a great test bed for this, but it's absolutely a big problem that newspapers will publish the full name of someone who was arrested, even if they're subsequently released without a conviction or even without charges. It's a massive and dangerous weapon in the hands of law enforcement (and others) that they can permanently damage someone's reputation—harming their future job prospects and social connections forever—without ever having to prove anything. This isn't a problem that's going to be solved by lawsuits, though, partially because Streisand and partially because in most of the cases where someone's hurt by this the newspapers have no legal obligation to refrain from publishing, so there's no grounds to sue. What we need is to reevaluate the law in light of "the internet never forgets".

wernerb 2y ago
Here in the Netherlands even after criminals are convicted we refer to them as Sean B for example. I agree this is good practise.
- eastbound 2y ago
  I disagree. We publish the full name of the victims, disclosing their privacy and the one of their families, but we don’t disclose the full name of the criminals. For their privacy.
  - Hizonner 2y ago
    Without taking a position on the larger issue, it's not dishonorable or shameful to be a victim of something.
    - Xenoamorphous 2y ago
      I guess it depends; see the recent case where apparently some old French lady was scammed out of hundreds of thousands of euro that she thought were being sent to Brad Pitt.
    - BoxFour 2y ago
      That’s not really accurate, both historically and presently. I highly doubt it's true even in a place as progressive as the Netherlands. An obvious one is that many fraud victims are often shamed for "falling for it."
    - krisoft 2y ago
      > it's not dishonorable or shameful to be a victim of something. That is not generally true. Or perhaps true in an idealised word, but in the real world many victims have a stigma attached to them. Victims of scams are frequently seen as guilible or naive. I think if it were known that someone has been scammed before many would be hesitant to hire them in a postition of financial trust. Similarly victims of rape are often portrayed in a bad light. People frequently question what did they do, or what did they wear such that what happened to them happened to them. Female victims of domestic abuse are often portrayed as schemers who orchestrated false circumstances such that they can get their exes in trouble with the law. Male victims of domestic abuse are often portrayed as not manly enough to protect themselves. Victims of workplace sexual harrasment are often portrayed as wrongdoers who just couldn’t keep their mouths shut. Someone who should just “took the compliment”, or perhaps be “less stuck up”. As if the real problem is that they reported what they reported as opposed to suffering it silently. None of these attitudes are okay, but nevertheless they do exists. Being a victim of these specific crimes happens to be dishonorable and shamefull at least in some people’s eyes.
  - em-bee 2y ago
    well we shouldn't be publishing names of victims either.
hsshhshshjk 2y ago
See: Luigi Mangioni
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
BoxFour 2y ago
It’s a double-edged sword. If the press is prohibited from reporting on arrests, you can end up with people just apprehended without a trace. The US certainly isn't above that, especially for "national security concerns." I’m not sure what the right balance looks like, but it’s definitely not a straightforward issue to resolve.
- lolinder 2y ago
  I can't remember the last time I saw news reports about an arrest where the arrestee plausibly benefited from the story being publicized. Maybe Snowden (who I think was charged but not arrested)? I think you'll find that where the state has an interest in keeping something under wraps it will be kept under wraps. Most arrest reports are of the casual voyeuristic kind, not serious journalism trying to keep the government accountable.
  - woodruffw 2y ago
    > I can't remember the last time I saw news reports about an arrest where the arrestee plausibly benefited from the story being publicized. The current POTUS and O.J. Simpson come to mind.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      OJ was pre Snowden, but I'll take the POTUS as an example! Not a great argument in favor of allowing the reports, though.
  - BoxFour 2y ago
    > I can't remember the last time I saw news reports about an arrest where the arrestee plausibly benefited from the story being publicized Bad week to say this, given Ross Ulbricht was just pardoned. There's zero chance he would've been pardoned without all the publicity around his arrest and incarceration.
    - lolinder 2y ago
ourmandave 2y ago
What if we had Community Notes for newspaper arrest reports? "Ourmandave was mistakenly identified by Internet Sleuths and is NOT the shooter in the Grassy Knoll."
ano-ther 2y ago
The EU has a "right to be forgotten", which is why you sometimes see a notice under the google results. This usually means someone asked them to clear certain search results. https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/ https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/ https://support.google.com/legal/answer/10769224?hl=en https://support.google.com/legal/answer/10769224?hl=en
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
woodruffw 2y ago
It's a problem, but the counterbalancing problem is (IMO) an equally big one: the public has a legitimate interest in how the criminal justice system handles cases, particularly when cases are dismissed before entering a public trial period. Florida has the worst possible version of this, where local governments/PDs appear to revel in publishing mugshots with virtually no pretense. But if I was a taxpaying citizen in SF, I believe I would be right in feeling entitled to read more about why a domestic violence case with a pre-existing written statement was dismissed and then sealed.
- lolinder 2y ago
  It's all well and good in theory, but no one publishes the follow-ups because they don't get engagement. Unless there's a very good story behind it, the vast majority of dismissals go entirely unreported, so the only record you get is that so and so was arrested. If it turns out that they arrest someone else for the same crime, you might get a follow-up that mentions that the original person was exonerated. But you certainly don't get a report that "such and such wasn't actually as exciting as it first appeared so charges were dropped". As you say, this case is the exception, but there has to be a decent middle ground that allows exceptions and doesn't allow casual voyeurism.
  - mlyle 2y ago
    Either harm is bad. If you release arrest records, people who are innocent have their reputations sullied. If you don't release arrest records, it's easier for the police to do questionable things (particularly to the poor and otherwise disadvantaged) without it being visible to the media, public, and those that might seek to right these wrongs. (Why so many arrests that don't lead to charges is interesting. People who prove innocent is one cause, and another is prosecutors only advancing really strong cases to maximize conviction rates is another. These are hard to tell apart.) So, the right now when we publish arrest records we give police the tool to create some lasting harm to people without strong proof, but make it harder for them to capriciously arrest people or for prosecutors to abuse their discretion.
    - 2y ago
punitivemugshot 2y ago
[dead]
lokar 2y ago
I think the arrest report is somewhat irrelevant. The neighbor could have knocked on the door and observed much of what was in the report. And without question they could report on their own firsthand experience.
tehwebguy 2y ago
This reads like “police abuse their power to arrest, so let’s let them arrest people in secret”
user3939382 2y ago
It’s also used to stifle 2A rights. Many states require a license application which intentionally asks not whether you’ve ever been convicted of a crime but whether you’ve ever been arrested, which can then be used to deny you.
- curt15 2y ago
  Protecting the 2A doesn't have to come at the expense of the 1A. The real problem is the license criterion that presumes guilt, not the accurate reporting of the arrest.
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  In what ways has it been used to deny a license application? Please give specific examples.
  - user3939382 2y ago
    Specifically it tends to be referred to as a test of “good moral character”. So depending on what the reviewing officer thinks about your arrest (not conviction!) record you can be denied due to lacking good moral character, which is obviously a completely arbitrary determination hence why that practice is working its way through the courts.
_heimdall 2y ago
> It's a massive and dangerous weapon in the hands of law enforcement (and others) that they can permanently damage someone's reputation I'd love to see people take the real lesson here - an arrest proves nothing of guilt, and it's surprisingly easy for cops to falsely arrest someone (whether they intended to or not). Our legal system is flawed enough as it is. When there are real concerns that can be raised over some cases that make it all the way to conviction we should be treating arrest records about as seriously a a politician promising the moon in a stump speech.
- lolinder 2y ago
  This is a really great idea in theory. Do you have a proposal for how to get there without stepping over tens of thousands of broken lives? How do you go about educating an entire population that's accustomed to thinking that arrest=guilt that this isn't true, especially when their news sources continue to report as though the arrest is the only really interesting part of the criminal justice system?
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Do you have a proposal for how to get there without stepping over tens of thousands of broken lives? An innocent unless proven guilty law. Employers, et cetera, may not conclude adversely from criminal charges absent a guilty plea or conviction.
    - RHSeeger 2y ago
      But are they allowed to not hire someone if doing so would draw public outrage (and financial harm) against the company? What about if the person was arrested for something that would cause that, but never actually charged? In the US at least, being arrested (or even accused) of certain things can end your career. Because, even it it's proven you didn't do it, no company will touch you with a 10 foot pole, because people (who don't care/know that you were innocent) will avoid the company if they hire you. There is no known solution to this problem.
Waterluvian 2y ago
It’s bizarre and freaky to even imagine the newspapers being remotely the problem here. The problem is the significant mismatch between the stigma of being arrested and the ease and frequency in which police perform arrests. Arrests do not imply guilt but arresting someone later found to be not guilty should be incredibly embarrassing for the police. But this is at odds with the unhealthy amount of vindictiveness found in many societies. You get people frothing at the mouth about how cops don’t seem to arrest people so easily. Politicians are perpetually harder on crime because that satisfies fearful minds. But the price of running a society in such a broken manner eventually comes due.
- lolinder 2y ago
  How do you think the stigma of being arrested developed? It didn't come to exist in a vacuum, it exists in a feedback loop with the kinds of voyeuristic news reporting that glories in showing a captioned photo of a person at their lowest: in a mug shot.
sedatk 2y ago
I once chatted with a police department Twitter account that used to publish names and pictures of people arrested. They had said it was their duty to inform the public and I had told them they could do that without attaching stigma to people’s faces and names. They didn’t agree to anything, but had stopped doing it after a while.
iepathos 2y ago
Right... but we all know this guy beat his girlfriend from the report. She didn't want to press charges, that doesn't mean this guy is innocent and it doesn't mean he shouldn't suffer reputational harm. For the good of any future women who might consider dating him it's actually in the interest of society that people like this have arrest reports published about them. Many abuse victims are too scared to press charges and just suffer silently. In doing so it enables abusers to move on to new victims who have no way of knowing until it's too late.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago
I've seen the opposite - hardcore criminals who are later shown to have been sexually abused children, yet the local newspaper cannot even show a facial mugshot, let alone a full name because of zany regulations governming free press reporting of criminal apprehensions. In the US, we have defamatory and libel case law for a reason. When you grant criminals rights over victims, the world becomes a worse place. What world do you want to live in ?
- lolinder 2y ago
  A world where if we absolutely must group people into immutable categories like "criminals" and "not criminals", we at least work harder than we currently do to limit the number of people who immutably become branded as criminals.

wernerb 2y ago

Here in the Netherlands even after criminals are convicted we refer to them as Sean B for example. I agree this is good practise.

eastbound 2y ago
I disagree. We publish the full name of the victims, disclosing their privacy and the one of their families, but we don’t disclose the full name of the criminals. For their privacy.
- Hizonner 2y ago
  Without taking a position on the larger issue, it's not dishonorable or shameful to be a victim of something.
  - Xenoamorphous 2y ago
    I guess it depends; see the recent case where apparently some old French lady was scammed out of hundreds of thousands of euro that she thought were being sent to Brad Pitt.
  - BoxFour 2y ago
    That’s not really accurate, both historically and presently. I highly doubt it's true even in a place as progressive as the Netherlands. An obvious one is that many fraud victims are often shamed for "falling for it."
  - krisoft 2y ago
    > it's not dishonorable or shameful to be a victim of something. That is not generally true. Or perhaps true in an idealised word, but in the real world many victims have a stigma attached to them. Victims of scams are frequently seen as guilible or naive. I think if it were known that someone has been scammed before many would be hesitant to hire them in a postition of financial trust. Similarly victims of rape are often portrayed in a bad light. People frequently question what did they do, or what did they wear such that what happened to them happened to them. Female victims of domestic abuse are often portrayed as schemers who orchestrated false circumstances such that they can get their exes in trouble with the law. Male victims of domestic abuse are often portrayed as not manly enough to protect themselves. Victims of workplace sexual harrasment are often portrayed as wrongdoers who just couldn’t keep their mouths shut. Someone who should just “took the compliment”, or perhaps be “less stuck up”. As if the real problem is that they reported what they reported as opposed to suffering it silently. None of these attitudes are okay, but nevertheless they do exists. Being a victim of these specific crimes happens to be dishonorable and shamefull at least in some people’s eyes.
- em-bee 2y ago
  well we shouldn't be publishing names of victims either.

hsshhshshjk 2y ago

See: Luigi Mangioni

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

BoxFour 2y ago

It’s a double-edged sword. If the press is prohibited from reporting on arrests, you can end up with people just apprehended without a trace. The US certainly isn't above that, especially for "national security concerns." I’m not sure what the right balance looks like, but it’s definitely not a straightforward issue to resolve.

lolinder 2y ago
I can't remember the last time I saw news reports about an arrest where the arrestee plausibly benefited from the story being publicized. Maybe Snowden (who I think was charged but not arrested)? I think you'll find that where the state has an interest in keeping something under wraps it will be kept under wraps. Most arrest reports are of the casual voyeuristic kind, not serious journalism trying to keep the government accountable.
- woodruffw 2y ago
  > I can't remember the last time I saw news reports about an arrest where the arrestee plausibly benefited from the story being publicized. The current POTUS and O.J. Simpson come to mind.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    OJ was pre Snowden, but I'll take the POTUS as an example! Not a great argument in favor of allowing the reports, though.
- BoxFour 2y ago
  > I can't remember the last time I saw news reports about an arrest where the arrestee plausibly benefited from the story being publicized Bad week to say this, given Ross Ulbricht was just pardoned. There's zero chance he would've been pardoned without all the publicity around his arrest and incarceration.
  - lolinder 2y ago

ourmandave 2y ago

What if we had Community Notes for newspaper arrest reports? "Ourmandave was mistakenly identified by Internet Sleuths and is NOT the shooter in the Grassy Knoll."

ano-ther 2y ago

The EU has a "right to be forgotten", which is why you sometimes see a notice under the google results. This usually means someone asked them to clear certain search results. https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/ https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/ https://support.google.com/legal/answer/10769224?hl=en https://support.google.com/legal/answer/10769224?hl=en

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

woodruffw 2y ago

It's a problem, but the counterbalancing problem is (IMO) an equally big one: the public has a legitimate interest in how the criminal justice system handles cases, particularly when cases are dismissed before entering a public trial period. Florida has the worst possible version of this, where local governments/PDs appear to revel in publishing mugshots with virtually no pretense. But if I was a taxpaying citizen in SF, I believe I would be right in feeling entitled to read more about why a domestic violence case with a pre-existing written statement was dismissed and then sealed.

lolinder 2y ago
It's all well and good in theory, but no one publishes the follow-ups because they don't get engagement. Unless there's a very good story behind it, the vast majority of dismissals go entirely unreported, so the only record you get is that so and so was arrested. If it turns out that they arrest someone else for the same crime, you might get a follow-up that mentions that the original person was exonerated. But you certainly don't get a report that "such and such wasn't actually as exciting as it first appeared so charges were dropped". As you say, this case is the exception, but there has to be a decent middle ground that allows exceptions and doesn't allow casual voyeurism.
- mlyle 2y ago
  Either harm is bad. If you release arrest records, people who are innocent have their reputations sullied. If you don't release arrest records, it's easier for the police to do questionable things (particularly to the poor and otherwise disadvantaged) without it being visible to the media, public, and those that might seek to right these wrongs. (Why so many arrests that don't lead to charges is interesting. People who prove innocent is one cause, and another is prosecutors only advancing really strong cases to maximize conviction rates is another. These are hard to tell apart.) So, the right now when we publish arrest records we give police the tool to create some lasting harm to people without strong proof, but make it harder for them to capriciously arrest people or for prosecutors to abuse their discretion.
  - 2y ago

punitivemugshot 2y ago

[dead]

lokar 2y ago

I think the arrest report is somewhat irrelevant. The neighbor could have knocked on the door and observed much of what was in the report. And without question they could report on their own firsthand experience.

tehwebguy 2y ago

This reads like “police abuse their power to arrest, so let’s let them arrest people in secret”

user3939382 2y ago

It’s also used to stifle 2A rights. Many states require a license application which intentionally asks not whether you’ve ever been convicted of a crime but whether you’ve ever been arrested, which can then be used to deny you.

curt15 2y ago
Protecting the 2A doesn't have to come at the expense of the 1A. The real problem is the license criterion that presumes guilt, not the accurate reporting of the arrest.
ranger_danger 2y ago
In what ways has it been used to deny a license application? Please give specific examples.
- user3939382 2y ago
  Specifically it tends to be referred to as a test of “good moral character”. So depending on what the reviewing officer thinks about your arrest (not conviction!) record you can be denied due to lacking good moral character, which is obviously a completely arbitrary determination hence why that practice is working its way through the courts.

_heimdall 2y ago

> It's a massive and dangerous weapon in the hands of law enforcement (and others) that they can permanently damage someone's reputation I'd love to see people take the real lesson here - an arrest proves nothing of guilt, and it's surprisingly easy for cops to falsely arrest someone (whether they intended to or not). Our legal system is flawed enough as it is. When there are real concerns that can be raised over some cases that make it all the way to conviction we should be treating arrest records about as seriously a a politician promising the moon in a stump speech.

lolinder 2y ago
This is a really great idea in theory. Do you have a proposal for how to get there without stepping over tens of thousands of broken lives? How do you go about educating an entire population that's accustomed to thinking that arrest=guilt that this isn't true, especially when their news sources continue to report as though the arrest is the only really interesting part of the criminal justice system?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Do you have a proposal for how to get there without stepping over tens of thousands of broken lives? An innocent unless proven guilty law. Employers, et cetera, may not conclude adversely from criminal charges absent a guilty plea or conviction.
  - RHSeeger 2y ago
    But are they allowed to not hire someone if doing so would draw public outrage (and financial harm) against the company? What about if the person was arrested for something that would cause that, but never actually charged? In the US at least, being arrested (or even accused) of certain things can end your career. Because, even it it's proven you didn't do it, no company will touch you with a 10 foot pole, because people (who don't care/know that you were innocent) will avoid the company if they hire you. There is no known solution to this problem.

Waterluvian 2y ago

It’s bizarre and freaky to even imagine the newspapers being remotely the problem here. The problem is the significant mismatch between the stigma of being arrested and the ease and frequency in which police perform arrests. Arrests do not imply guilt but arresting someone later found to be not guilty should be incredibly embarrassing for the police. But this is at odds with the unhealthy amount of vindictiveness found in many societies. You get people frothing at the mouth about how cops don’t seem to arrest people so easily. Politicians are perpetually harder on crime because that satisfies fearful minds. But the price of running a society in such a broken manner eventually comes due.

lolinder 2y ago
How do you think the stigma of being arrested developed? It didn't come to exist in a vacuum, it exists in a feedback loop with the kinds of voyeuristic news reporting that glories in showing a captioned photo of a person at their lowest: in a mug shot.

sedatk 2y ago

I once chatted with a police department Twitter account that used to publish names and pictures of people arrested. They had said it was their duty to inform the public and I had told them they could do that without attaching stigma to people’s faces and names. They didn’t agree to anything, but had stopped doing it after a while.

iepathos 2y ago

Right... but we all know this guy beat his girlfriend from the report. She didn't want to press charges, that doesn't mean this guy is innocent and it doesn't mean he shouldn't suffer reputational harm. For the good of any future women who might consider dating him it's actually in the interest of society that people like this have arrest reports published about them. Many abuse victims are too scared to press charges and just suffer silently. In doing so it enables abusers to move on to new victims who have no way of knowing until it's too late.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

IG_Semmelweiss 2y ago

I've seen the opposite - hardcore criminals who are later shown to have been sexually abused children, yet the local newspaper cannot even show a facial mugshot, let alone a full name because of zany regulations governming free press reporting of criminal apprehensions. In the US, we have defamatory and libel case law for a reason. When you grant criminals rights over victims, the world becomes a worse place. What world do you want to live in ?

lolinder 2y ago
A world where if we absolutely must group people into immutable categories like "criminals" and "not criminals", we at least work harder than we currently do to limit the number of people who immutably become branded as criminals.