Let me clear the air a little bit him and my mom live in Baxter County AR, I am stationed in NY. He goes to his so called dealer to get a dimebag well he didn’t know the DEA was trying to take the dealer down. DEA says cooperate and we will drop everything. Long story short the dealer is still active and my bro has his face plastered on the NET. FOR A FREAKING DIMEBAG. So my other brother who is a lawyer I left a cpl messages with no answer yet. Oh it was a dimebag of pot…don’t know anything else that comes that way. I saw his pic and he was released and it just got me wondering what website can gain of a dimebag and getting charged with possession with inten to deliver?
It’d be an interesting lawsuit, at least.
Why does a jail have a website?
Arrest records are public. Even if you’re innocent or the charges are dropped or whatever, they still smear your reputation by putting your mugshot up. It can be a good thing too, since it cuts down on the number of people arrested quietly with no disclosed reason.
Thank you for making the second point. It does suck that I am forever searchable on an arrest database but I’ll take that over the cops being able to disappear me as a matter of course, as opposed to having to do extra work to disappear me. This is why the suspension of due process for ANY crime is bad. I know I’m preaching to the choir here.
It should be able to be wiped clean, and not ever be published to the internet without safeguards to prevent AI-scraping/people search websites/etc. from picking it up. These websites (and other sources of the information) should block anybody without a legitimate and reasonable need to know that information about the person arrested (and access should be logged) - it’s also not newsworthy to systematically report on arrests that are e.g. victimless and not tied to a notable event (as newspapers tend to do).
If one wants their arrest record to be completely public, that should be a right upon arrest.
As it stands, permanent and public arrest records prevent one from restoring their reputation and absolutely impairs their ability to function in our discriminatory society - where arrest records and criminal history are heavily weighted against applicants.
Adding on, there can be good reasons to have arrest records be public and accessible. It can be beneficial for people to know if someone in the community has engaged in dangerous activity that could threaten others around them. Even if that person is able to avoid conviction or negotiate a lesser charge, you might personally want to change your interactions with them. The most common example might be with sex offenders, but that’s also being used for a lot of disingenuous arguments right now, so I’ll offer some others. Say someone is arrested for driving while intoxicated, perhaps someone you know. You might have never noticed them intoxicated before but perhaps they’re just good at hiding it, and you would probably choose not to ride in a vehicle with them driving or let a family member ride with them. Or perhaps you see someone arrested for a violent assault and you’ve also had past experiences with them that were also violent or threatening but never felt like it was worth reporting or felt that reporting the crime might make you less safe. If you or others know that person is in jail it can be easier for you and others to come to the prosecutors to report your own experiences and make it easier for the prosecutors to get a dangerous person out of the public.
On the flip side, the US is supposed to have the principle that someone is innocent until proven guilty. Publicizing arrests before a conviction can make that harder, and there are plenty of examples of innocent people who were “convicted in the media” but later found not guilty in court. That can often place a burden on innocent people to continue defending themselves for years afterwards.
In theory an open and transparent judicial process makes the system harder to abuse. In an effort to prevent punishing innocent people for crimes they did not commit, a judicial process might be designed in way that sometimes allows guilty persons to avoid punishment. The public has a right to know about threats so they can take actions to protect themselves. Wrongly accused individuals should not have to be burdened by false accusations after successfully defending themselves. People who have served their sentence for crimes they committed should not continue to be punished after completing their sentence.
Balancing these different interests is challenging and I think it’s pretty easy to say the current system is not at a good balance. Perhaps a good balance isn’t possible. The world is far more complicated than little comments online can make it seem. I think it’s pretty easy, though, to say the government should not be arresting people and making money by selling information about those arrests. A commercial entity taking that information and publishing it for a profit can also be morally questionable and should perhaps have legal restrictions. Outlets that exist solely to find the most attractive mug shots are at least in bad taste. But the question gets harder the closer this gets to a reputable news organization that is also trying to responsibly balance these considerations.
I’d certainly be interested to see the results of a lawsuit based on the original question.
Why does a jail have a website?
Why does a publically owned website have ads? It should be funded by the public as a service, not as a product.
Are you sure it’s publicly owned?
no, but institutions that deal with the identity of those involved in the justice system *should* be, so I’m assuming that it is.
What should be and what is are two different things. I’m just saying that in the US at least, much of the carceral state is privatized.
Welcome to America, where slavery is one of the largest businesses under a brand new name.
And why is it advertising?
Because they’re all part of a huge repression apparatus.
Really don’t have the answer for that. But plenty of cities or counties due. Its almost like being on the Sex Registry. Because anything on the net will never be completely deleted. Insert Beyonce ugly face pic here.
wtf, where do you live? Is it a police state? How would publicly posting photos of arrested people possibly help with rehabilitation?
America probably. Very often people accused of crimes are basically labeled guilty through news media and posting their faces all over.
Jail rosters are generally public information. I live in a fairly blue state with a lot of prisons (Colorado) and can look up any prisoner in the state system online.
Part of the thinking is that if it were secretive, the government could just disappear people (rightfully a concern with ICE right now) without anyone knowing.
I don’t see how it prevents anyone from getting disappeared. All they have to do is not add them to the database.
Well, any law is only as good as people following it (and enforcement for violations)
Quite the opposite. A police state would hide information on who was arrested and under what charges. This is one of the painful bits of living in a democracy.
Are public mugshots necessary? I can imagine quite a bit of corruption were they withheld. For example, search my common name and you’ll get dozens of hits in just about any sizeable jurisdiction. With my face shown, you know if it’s really me or not.
I remember when my friend visited Arizona and they came back with a full color newspaper-style police publication with hundreds of mugshots and the crimes they were accused of, these were published weekly and widely available. Pretty fun to browse through, wish my state did that.
What state?
Solid, most likely, or OP would have a higher priority concern.
Prolly gas.
It’s a mutual benefit thing since they’re advertising his business too.Might not be in sales, on second thought.
