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Comment by Mediterraneo10 | Hacker News Reader

A problem with mugshot sites is that they often detail the charges, and sometimes the charges just aren’t something people are going to be tolerant of.

For example, I know a young man who traded nude photos on his phone with a girlfriend who was just below the age of consent, got caught, and was arrested and charged with "sexual exploitation of a minor". Once in court, those charges were easily plea-bargained away, but the mugshot and charges will probably be findable on the web for years and years, and changing the public’s kneejerk reaction of disgust and hatred at those charges (after all, the actual context isn’t there for them to read) isn’t something that I would be optimistic about.

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One of the other issues that your comment shines a light on is that police often book someone under multiple charges. A safe one that the person is likely to be able to be convicted on, and multiple charges that probably don't apply to the situation.

This is common because it gives prosecutors the power to "offer" to drop the higher charges in exchange for accepting a plea bargain to the lower, and likely more appropriate, charges.

The result of this is that booking information, with the photos, from a drunken bar fight might show the person was charged with assault with a deadly weapon when the final charge will end up being something like disorderly conduct.

If anything, that feels like an argument in favor of restricting what can be published about arrests and unproven charges in general -- not just the mugshots.

In my country, but I think in EU in general, Police are not allowed anything besides the first name and a first letter of surname. Innocent until proven guilty.

Press also never publishes the surname, although they can publish occupation or other non-identifying information.

This has lead to an amusing situation when press articles appeared one day: “John X., a son of an ex-president was charged with causing a car crash”.

As a side note, even conviction records are sealed, because you have a right to expunge any conviction 5 years after you served your term. Records being public would stay online forever otherwise. (In places where you need to not be a convicted felon, you can obtain a government certificate to show as a proof)

My sister once decided to look up if a particularly lousy co-worker had an arrest record. Turns out he was arrested on charges of domestic battery, but not convicted. Which is why he's been around her workplace so long, it's a big red flag for a hiring manager so he isn't getting a job anyplace else. Now he probably deserved to be arrested, but there's always the chance that he really is innocent, in which case the US justice system has failed him.

When it comes to domestic battery there's a lot of middle ground between guilty and innocent.

America has adopted what's called the Duluth model, which recognizes, correctly, that men are the more dangerous partner in a domestic relationship with a man and a woman in it. This has... consequences, in terms of who gets arrested, and who can therefore press charges.

When a couple get into a physical altercation, it's pretty common that neither of them looks very good, behavior-wise, to an outside observer. But it has to be pretty open-and-shut assault by the woman, usually with a weapon causing serious injury, for arrest and charges to fall on her shoulders.

Although if the guy was the kind of dude where your sister thought "hey, I wonder if this guy has a record?" well, that tells its own story, doesn't it?

Pretty good argument for not publishing mugshots, though: if a woman starts throwing shit at her boyfriend, and comes at him with her fists, and he pushes her away, he's probably going to spend a night in jail if the police get called due to all the hollering. No court date or (additional) jail time, though, just gets his stuff back and goes home.

I never thought of it this way before. These mugshot landing pages don't exactly have a lot of subtlety to the outcome about the charges.

I've often done a thought experiment across much of what I read in my local newspaper for people getting picked up... etc.

If we didn't have drugs, or if we didn't drive, would the police have much to do? Probably not.

When it comes to drugs, we make drug users much more evil than they are.

When it comes to driving, its a relatively new thing in the history of the human race.

I firmly think the law should be there to protect us from others, and not ourselves.

Don't forget, the police have there agenda too. They want to grow their departments and look great at solving crime.

The individual officers are just enforcing what they are told to enforce, and behave how they should. They just are following the orders that the legislatures are giving us.

TBH... I don't believe people belong in jail unless they are a threat to others. We should take the extreme crimes and put people in prison for those. People that hurt or kill others do either need a break from society, or should have a 'permanent' break from society.

The rest, we just need to try to reform, and keep on making them functional in this society. Its a far less burden.

Just my $0.02.

> but the mugshot and charges will probably be findable on the web for years and years

The injustice is that this person was charged in the first place. The court system is public, and must remain that way. We could remove the mugshot, but that won’t help people like the one you’ve described.

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