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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?"
it's different when the news does it because they are reporting on a government agency. in this case the government agency is showing off people accused of a crime simply to humiliate them before a trial. this is wrong
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?
I thought it was a common trait for oppressive regimes to make use of public shaming/humiliation for ... helping enforce the law? Let's see how well the formula would work:
1) depressed person starts drinking
2) becomes alcoholic
3) starts driving a car under the influence
4) gets caught eventually
5) public humiliation - gets more depressed
6) goes back to drinking, and starts driving without a license
let's say step 6 is they go into rehab. They come back into public, random strangers start saying things like "hey - I remember you - you were caught for DUI" ... talk about not even getting a chance to put your past behind you. Sounds like a formula to keep these people in a permanent cycle of alcoholism.
I don't see how this helps at all.
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.
It's funny that of all the crimes out there, they choose to do this with DUI suspects. The notion that "driving is a privilege, not a right" has been twisted and abused so that if you are accused by the state of a DUI offense, you either have to incriminate yourself or suffer a punishment for not incriminating yourself. On a MVR (motor vehicle record) the charge for refusing a breathalyzer is quite similar to the charge for having taken and failed a breathalyzer. DUI, certain asset forfeiture laws, and maybe sexual harassment are the only crimes where the accused must demonstrate innocence. None of this is compatible with a reasonable interpretation of the Fifth Amendment, yet it goes on, because it's "for our own good" or something.
So it's interesting that this is done with DUI arrestees. They're basically screwed either way. This attempt to attach a stigma just makes that more so.
That makes sense. It's common sense, really. Criminals generally do not believe that they will get caught. If they believe that they will certainly get caught they tend not to do the crime. A stigma is a punishment that takes place after they get caught. Of course this isn't going to have much of a deterrent effect. If you really want to prevent crime, clever ways to make people suffer won't do the trick. That is punishment but it's not much of a deterrent. It'd be better to understand what personal/character flaws make someone like a DUI offender want to be so careless with the life and safety of others. Then you'd have some ability to prevent. But that's a much harder problem than locking people up or publically humiliating them which are quite easy to do by comparison.
I've always believed that there should be no such thing as an arrest record. There should be only a record of convictions. Otherwise someone can be haunted for the rest of their lives by a mere accusation that they have to explain to all future employers and others when in fact they are innocent. Otherwise people get the idea that cops and judges and politicians are something other than human beings who can make serious mistakes. Arrest records don't do anything to serve any real notion of justice. Neither does defaming someone who has not actually been convicted.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
MADD can kiss my fucking ass. They aren't even about drink driving anymore -- their Founder left the organization because they've turned into (in her words) a neo-prohibitionist organization.
The fact that I have to drive through a roadblock and explain why I'm using the roadway just because I had the nerve to buy groceries on a Saturday night is infuriating.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
That's an inevitable and unfortunate side effect of basing public policy on extreme visceral emotions, like the loss of a loved one. The idea that someone you care about is hurt, maimed, or killed because of the completely preventable, blatant irresponsibility and disregard for life of a drunk driver is quite naturally an extreme and very emotional position. I'll make an understatement and say that it's downright fucking horrible and I wouldn't wish it on any enemy. That's quite understandable.
The problem is that because this begins with an extreme and emotional position it has its basis in visceral satisfaction. It does not have its basis in a reasonable approach to making changes to the law and the culture to ultimately benefit society. It is natural that what begins with an extreme finds its home within an extreme such as neo-Prohibition. Prohibition of any sort is quite simply the failure to recognize human beings as moral agents capable of making choices and being held responsible for those choices and instead transferring that status to inanimate objects like bottles of ethanol. It's completely unreasonable and dehumanizing. It also doesn't work.
Just as a judge is expected to recuse himself from a case to which he has personal connections, those who have been deeply, personally, and tragically affected by drunk driving are the least qualified to create public policy concerning it. The neo-Prohibition is because enough is never enough. Enough is never enough because the pain of such a staggering loss like these mothers have unjustly suffered is so great that no piece of legislation can hope to take it away.
I'm 100% behind using the police power of government to stop drunk drivers. I drive a car, too. So do my friends and family. I don't want to be endangered by someone else's blatant stupidity, nor do I desire that for anyone else. But I say that based on sound principle of what is reasonable, not emotional hatred of people who perpetrate such crimes. What I support even more than stopping drunk drivers is the preservation of our civil liberties while doing it. You can't get that with ends-justify-the-means thinking.
If someone refuses to use reason and principle, and death and loss are the only criteria they recognize, then I want them to consider this: lots of people die because of drunk drivers. How many people fought and died to secure the civil liberties that made this country the light of the world? How many more will suffer and die if we erode those civil rights and become a totalitarian police state?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein