Local police post mugshots on Pinterest, leading to a 57% boost in arrests

That NPR article you point out (which is really way better than this one) claims:

    "Warrant services" is police speak for arrests.

Thank you for that.

The Pinterest page is here (http://pinterest.com/themercury/wanted-by-police/)

I'd be interested to see if Google (or anyone) tried their face recognition on these photos and provide information to the police.

It means a 57% rise in arrests of those with outstanding warrants. Either the subject was already arrested, released, and didn't show up for court, or a warrant was issued for them by a judge based on a request by an officer and they can't locate the person to arrest them in the first place. Although many of these people were technically already in the system, the effect on the system is the same as a 57% rise in new arrests, since if a wanted person can't be located, they are not using a jail bed, their case is not taking up court docket space, and we aren't paying for their prosecution and in most cases their defense.

"warrant services" = "serving a warrant".

It means arresting somebody when there is a warrant for their arrest. # of arrests includes when a cop sees somebody doing something and arrests them on the spot, warrant services is only arrests where the cops are out looking for somebody with the intention of arresting them for past crimes.

Denonciations are a good thing if you believe a criminal should be arrested as a consequence of his initial actions.

Denonciations are a bad thing if you believe that someone who didn't get caught in the act should be able to escape

972 - est-tu de Martinique ?

Technically, upvoting an article merely means you think it is interesting, not that you support it. So you can in good conscious upvote this article if it is interesting and you want to see the discussion.

Unfortunately, most people treat up/downvotes as "agree/disagree", which is not actually the intended purpose. I routinely upvote quality comments even if I disagree with them, because the author has shared some interesting/well supported insight that provokes conversation (regardless of my personal feeling towards it)

In the US, businesses can legally reject employment based on an arrest record. In France it's illegal to post arrest records where there's no conviction; probably wanted posters are an exception though.

Some people may not realize there's a warrant out for them.

So you are suggesting that some laws aren't worth upholding because they aren't financially viable?

So you think we should just give up entirely on trying to stop, say burglars and car thieves?

There are lots of theft on there.

It's probably true that just catching thieves does little to stop them from committing crime. Giving people treatment for addiction; giving them support for MH problems ('treatment' is a difficult concept for the problematic diagnosis of one of the personality disorders); and properly run restorative justice would be cheaper and do more to prevent repeated crime.

Unfortunately some people are not interested in that, and just want to punish offenders.

Deterence is increased both by the severity of the punishment, but also by the certainty of receiving the punishment. I think most major crimes are committed by people who have comitted minor crimes. If getting caught for minor things becomes more likely, it may be less tempting to go down that path. There's a large body of work trying to evaluate the effects of both causes. Arguably, the US has gone way down in the realm of diminishing returns in terms of severity, especially when it come to drug laws. Of course this doesn't take away any of the potential downsides in terms of civil liberties of any approach that raises the certainty of getting punishment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_(legal)

To the extent that employers want to screen candidates who skip out on jury duty, it's hard to argue that there's a "privacy" issue in outing them. Skipping jury duty should be a matter of public record. You are obligated to serve as a juror when required. Willfully avoiding a jury summons is in fact a misdemeanor crime.

Don't skip jury duty.

The bigger problem with posting wanted signs on social networks is that they can't be expunged. This is a real issue, but very few people ever expunge their arrest records anyways.

The even bigger problem has nothing at all to do with social networks; it's that it's unfair (and probably unlawful) to screen employees by arrest record to begin with.

Well, it's worth pointing out that this issue existed before pinterest. Tons of local PD's post mugshots on their websites.

Try googling the names of idiots you went to high school with. You're sure to find someone's mugshot.

If the media is focusing on it, it's rare. If the media stops running stories about violence (or runs fewer), then violence may be getting out of hand. If a single story about violence runs for a week, then it's rare, so violence is going down.

Media is weird.

How well did putting pictures of missing children on milk cartons work?