Should the Mugshot Industry be Regulated? States Push Legislation to Protect Individuals from Disproportionate Reputational Harm

Mugshot websites began popping up in the late-2000s, serving as aggregators of publicly available arrest photographs and criminal records. The websites provide the full name, birthdate, and a list of criminal charges along with the suspect’s mugshot. Some sites allow users to comment on mugshots, and tag them; for example, as “celebrity,” “hotties,” “transgender,” “handicap,” “scary,” or “WTF.”

While this business model may seem like yet another run-of-the-mill tabloid style shaming business, mugshot websites claim the industry also serves as a type of public service, making valuable information more freely available to the people that need it. The data is legally scraped from police department websites, and then republished. Mugshots.com, JustMugshots.com, BustedMugshots.com, and Arrests.org are just a few of the hundreds of mugshot aggregators currently in existence. “No one should have to go to the courthouse to find out if their kid’s baseball coach has been arrested,” said the creator of JustMugshots in a New York Times interview. “Our goal is to make that information available online, without having to jump through any hoops,” he said. Others have argued that the added shame serves as an effective deterrent for committing crimes in the future, since the fear of a potential lifetime of reputational harm can be a far greater motivator to abide by the law than the actual legal punishment for the crime.

The arguments put forth by mugshot website creators appear, on the surface, to be in the interest of the public good. They follow the same logic which allowed for the enactment of Megan’s Law, a federal law passed in 1994 which required law enforcement authorities to make sex offender records available to the public. However, unlike the sex offender registry, the majority of mugshot websites run on a business model which contradicts the good intentions behind making publicly available data easier to access. Most of these websites will actually allow you to take down your mugshot for a fee, ranging roughly between $30-$500 (or more), depending on the site. Therefore the claim that mugshot sites are simply helping to spread useful information does not hold up when you allow potential criminals to remove their listings in exchange for money. If site owners are willing to censor what they deem to be information of public importance, then they clearly do not have the public interest in mind. Secondly, charging for removal creates a system which provides a disproportionate advantage to the wealthier “criminals,” as many of them cannot afford the expensive fees required to take down their arrest listings, especially when the mugshot has circulated on multiple websites, each demanding a fee of their own. The process of removing a mugshot online has been compared to playing a game of Whac-A-Mole, whereby you pay off several websites to remove their listing, only to find more pop up later.

Another reason mugshot websites are accused of being a form of “legalized extortion” is the fact that many of them will still charge a fee to remove a listing even if the people whose images are on display had the charges dropped against them, or were never found guilty. These websites are monetizing humiliation, and as a result have little interest in the outcome of their arrest. “Mug shots are merely artifacts of an arrest, not proof of a conviction,” writes David Segal of the New York Times. The article profiles Janese Trimaldi, a Tampa doctor who was wrongly accused of aggravated assault in an attempt to protect herself from an abusive boyfriend who was threatening her with a steak knife. The charges were later dropped, but that did not stop several websites from circulating her mugshot, only agreeing to remove them once she paid their individual fees, ranging from $30 to $400 each. Burdened with $200,000 in student debt from medical school, Dr. Trimaldi has had to live with the constant fear that those photographs would destroy her lifelong efforts to practice medicine.

The proliferation of mugshot sites has allowed for seemingly low-level crimes to have a drastic effect on a person’s ability to find gainful employment. A simple DUI could potentially take up most of the first page of Google’s search results for t