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Drunk Driver Mugshots Featured On Facebook
An anonymous reader writes "Get yourself a DUI and your mugshot may get some exposure on Facebook. That is, if you get caught in New Jersey by Evesham Township's police, which have begun posting mugshots of arrested people, convicted or not, on its Facebook page. Now, we know that if you get arrested, your privacy is pretty much limited to the brand of your underpants, but the local police department has started a controversy and may find itself in hot water. How much value does a public mugshot on Facebook have to the public? What privacy rights do you have if you get arrested?"
and may find itself with a lawsuit for millions which tax payers will have to pay up while the police department will suffer no ill effects.
Fixed.
Newsday has been publishing DUI arrestees' mugshots on their website for at least the last few years.
It's always confirmation bias!
It's implying that alleged criminals are somehow less than human
FTFY, because until the charges are proved in court, simply being arrested could mean any number of things that fall well short of being guilty of an actual offence. Unfortunately, by posting mugshots to the internet (read "the public domain"), it ensures that these people will be forever linked to a crime they may or may not have even committed.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
So then wait for them to be convicted in court, and then ridicule away. Is due process really such an inconvenience for you?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
For good and for bad, getting arrested is a matter of the public record. (You wouldn't want to be arrested and held secretly, would you?) For some, the fact of public disclosure and "loss of face" is reason enough not to do bad things. For the innocent, it's our society's willingness to ostracize someone based merely on accusation that is the problem, not the posting of the picture.
Somewhat relatedly, recent studies have shown that 44% of men would be unwilling to help a lost child because of the ease of which false accusations could ruin their lives. Maybe it's our knee-jerk judgmental culture that needs to be fixed instead.
Posting pictures of people who have been arrested but not convicted would seem to be very dodgy territory, the police could be exposing themselves to all sorts of law suits. While the police generally try their hardest to do a good job, mistakes can be made. Putting up pictures of people who are later released without charge might still cause those people complications in their lives, whether it is over-zealous local vigilantes, or employers.
A friend of mine is a primary school teacher. He had to break up a fight between two ten year old boys a couple of years ago. As he was separating them, one of the parents arrived (end of school day) and then claimed my friend had assaulted her son. This all took a couple of months to sort out, nearly finished my friend's professional career. He was proved completely innocent, classic case of an insane parent believing their little Jimmy never did any wrong. My friend was incredibly stressed and depressed throughout, years of hard work possibly destroyed by one stupid parent, and ended up moving town to take up work in another school where he is very successful, has been promoted twice.
I can only imagine what might have happened to him if his pictures had been on Facebook for those two months with the caption "suspected child assault". He would have been under intense psychological pressure, and perhaps local parents might withdraw their children from his care, or pressurise his head teacher to sack him, or even taken illegal direct vigilante action. And then at the end after they'd ruined his life they'd find out he was innocent. Even if they gave him his backpay and reinstated him in his old job, he could have been in a very bad way psychologically if he'd been attacked as a result of this, maybe rumours would have spread that couldn't be stopped (his neighbours in his street saying "well he was proved innocent but I don't want my kids near his house" etc).
Posting pictures of arrested but not convicted folk in any circumstance, whether on Facebook, or a town billboard, or in the local paper - no - I think this is difficult territory.
As part of the "save the children" panic, the supreme court has already decided that such listings "aren't punishment", which is why they say they can be applied retroactively, after conviction. Without the (ridiculous, sophist) determination that such listings do no harm in and of themselves, the ex post facto prohibitions would come into play (as they actually should, of course.)
Consequently, I doubt that any listing of arrest subjects will be determined to be damaging or harmful, or that they require a conviction.
Shaming - permanent and otherwise - is part of America's new commitment to retribution over rehabilitation, and its support for the creation of a permanent rock-bottom lower class. The public is all for it; they love the drama and the fuckarosis that it all engenders, and it is a very rare citizen indeed that has any concept of how and why these things are wrong.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
All well and good, except these are being posted when these people are arrested. At this time, they are still presumed innocent until guilt is proven or they are convicted of a crime. This smacks of harassment.
How they're made public is irrelevant. If you don't liek it - get the law changed to make arrests NOT part of the public recored - but nobody will want that will they?
But it does matter how accurately they portray those public records. That is, if they are found to not make it clear that those are only arrest records, not convictions, they set themselves up for the same liability that journalists avoid by the usage of "suspect", "alleged", and "accused." If they are considered to be misrepresenting or obscuring the fact those depicted people were only arrested, not convicted, they risk a libel suit.
It also complicates matters if an arrest was made in bad faith, or any mistakes or wrong-doings. If charges are not pressed, or the court dismisses charges due to lack of evidence or other reasons, the accused may be able to seek compensation for both the bad arrest, and the bad publicity the police activity generated for the accused.
I know a someone who was arrested for DUI, but it was thrown out of court due to the total lack of evidence (no evidence they operated any vehicle that night). That person could of had their professional life ruined by such police's active attempt to "name and shame" people who was never found guilty of a crime. Frankly that smacks of police exceeding their authority and mandate, as if the police think they are judge and jury as well, and that they would never accuse an innocent person incorrectly. The history in reality shows otherwise. That why justice has a due process.
Why? The American public has allowed all manner of listings without any conviction, police or judicial action.
Just offhand: No-fly lists; No-buy lists; Gun owner lists; "offender" lists; land owner lists; boat owner lists; etc.
Unfortunately, the average citizen fails to anticipate what one seemingly harmless or seemingly desirable invasion of privacy means in terms of enabling behavior when an obviously harmful one comes around.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.